How Much Do Bloggers Make?

How much do bloggers make? Well, it varies. It’s sort of like asking how much actors make. Some make a whole lot and some don’t make much at all. We’ll get into some numbers too.

Understand how bloggers make money

If you understand how bloggers make money, you’ll better understand why it varies so much.

I’d recommend reading my post How to Make Money Blogging for an in-depth explanation of how it works, as well as a list of the many ways bloggers make money today.

When I started, I asked the same thing (& how much I make)

Currently I make six figures a year, but back in 2010 when I was just starting out, I asked the readers of this blog to share their incomes. It certainly wasn’t a scientific study, nor was it a representative cross-section of all bloggers, but many did share their incomes and I am so grateful they did.

Update: It’s now 2016 and many of the incomes people shared (in the comments below) are now years old and likely no longer accurate simply because things in the blogging world change so fast. Still, I’m keeping the comments live just for fun.

The general pageviews-to-income ratio then

When I first asked people to share what they were making in 2010, I saw a general trend emerge. Of those who answered, most were making about 1% of their monthly pageviews. For example, if a blogger got 40,000 pageviews per month, they we’re making roughly $400 a month. If they got 400,000 pageviews per month, it was about $4000 a month.

The way bloggers are making money now

I’d say most of the bloggers who answered the question in 2010 made most of their money via display ads. Today, that income stream (display ads), on average, is far less lucrative for bloggers. (Again, I’ll refer you to my post How to Make Money Blogging for a list of many more income streams.)

These days the trend seems to clearly point in the direction of creating and selling your own products as well as things like affiliate marketing (one of my top income streams which I list here), sponsored posts, etc.

Determining factors

The amount one makes blogging depends on many factors like:

Your niche

How well-known you are

How effective your networking is

If you are fortunate enough to be recognized and linked to by well-known bloggers

If you have outstanding content that makes people keep coming back

If you have multiple income streams

Your type and number of income streams

If you write about topics for which there are companies willing to pay advertising

How much time does an income-producing blog require? A lot!

I’m going to make a broad, blanket statement here just for perspective (there are exceptions to every rule, so please take that into account). I would say, your income is pretty proportional to the amount of time you put in.

In other words, it’s not likely you’ll make a full-time income writing and networking 2-4 hours a day. You could probably make a decent part-time income doing so, but getting to that point would require a good amount of blogging knowledge and experience.

How long will it take before I start making money on my blog? It’ll be a while.

Like I said, you will always find exceptions to the rule, but I’ve been doing this many years and have heard many bloggers’ stories. A very common experience is the following:

I started blogging for fun or on a whim. I did it because I enjoyed it.

It took me a while to realize I could make money doing it. This was a nice thought because I was putting a lot of time into it.

I slowly learned how to monetize my blog and income started trickling in.

Soon, I got the hang of it. When I really started treating my blog as a business, my income increased.

It took me at least a year or two to get to the point where the income was full-time and steady.

I always tell folks that I worked for 8 months on my blog before receiving a single check! You have to make sure you are committed and passionate about what you’re blogging about. Focus first on quality content and bringing in traffic. And if you NEED the money…like NOW? Don’t start a blog. Get a day job.

If you’re new to the blogging and social media scene, I’d say give yourself at least 3-6 months before you start pulling in an income. And even then, it’ll most likely be coffee money.

The idea that you can start a blog today and make a full-time income within a few months is, for most of us, simply not realistic.

Having said that, many more people are starting blogs these days with the sole intention of making money. In some cases, they are able to expedite the process since they are purposeful and focused from the beginning. My point is, people come about this “blogging for money” thing in so many ways. That’s why it varies.

Some numbers

First, I don’t know of any hard numbers about blogging incomes across the board. I think it varies widely and I suspect many (most?) don’t earn much.

Many years ago, Problogger surveyed his audience about income two years in a row. Both years he found that most bloggers were not earning income or earning very little. It’s hard to say if those percentages are similar today.

Feel free to read the comments below for some numbers (note the dates though). Also feel free to add to them if you’d like.

There are many bloggers these days who share very detailed income reports. In fact, I keep track of many on one of my Pinterest boards (you can follow that board here).

Important note: Usually a person has been blogging a while before they start posting their income reports, so the numbers you see here are generally not from beginning bloggers. This is important to remember, lest you think these numbers are typical.

Many, many, many bloggers make far, far less than what you see below. Some never really make any money at all…despite considerable effort.

Still, if you want an idea of what’s possible, here are some examples (links go to their income reports general page):

Arts & Classy – At the end of 2015, Meredith was making about $5000 per month.

Becky & Paula – Becky & Paula each have their own blogs but share their income reports on their joint blog. As of 2015, Paula was making about $5000 per month and Becky $40,000. (They also occasionally share the income reports of other bloggers too.)

As I said, this post was originally published in 2010 after asking my readers to share their incomes. At the time, this blog was only 2.5 months old (although I had been blogging elsewhere for 6 years prior to that).

I’ve kept all the answers in the comments for fun and for reference. Here’s the original question and my answers. If you would like to add yours, please feel free!

How much do you make?

Here’s what I said:

How old is your blog? 2 1/2 months.

Niche? Blogging tips, time-management tips, how to start a blog, how to make money blogging.

Pageviews per month? Google Analytics tells me in the last 30 days (May 15, 2010 – June 14, 2010) I’ve received 13,149 pageviews. (This number is not normal. See special circumstance below.)

Monthly income? In the same time period (mid-May to mid-June), I’ve made about $500. (Again, not a normal number. See special circumstance below.) This does not include income from design/consulting which I would say resulted from my blog but is not directly related to it.

Main income streams? Affiliate sales (i.e. getting a portion of a sale for referring someone to a product or service).

How long before you made money? I blogged almost 6 years without trying to make money, but in that time I learned a whole lot so by the time I started making money, it happened within the first month.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? At least 4-6.

Turning point or special circumstance? Special circumstance: I blogged for almost 6 years and I made pennies per month. Making an income wasn’t really my focus until I started this blog which is a culmination of what I’ve learned over the last 6 years and I would absolutely not have the same numbers if I had started as a new blogger. I would guesstimate that a blogger who started blogging 2 months ago would have made $0 and pageviews would be between 10 and 50 per day.

Turning point: Attending a blogging conference. The networking at the conference was huge for me as was the inspiration to pursue blogging as income and to do so full steam ahead.

If you’re game, copy this list of questions, paste it into a comment and answer as many as you’d like. All I ask is that you keep it real.

If you found this post fascinating or helpful, I’d love it if you passed it on. Thank you!

I want to know other people’s answers, so I guess it’s only fair to answer the questions myself. 🙂

How old is your blog? 2 years
Niche? None. (And therein lies my problem!) Family, faith, life, etc.
Pageviews per month? 7,400
Monthly income? about $25
Main income streams? BlogHer ads (but I’ve just recently switched to JuiceBox Jungle)
How long before you made money? More than 1 1/2 years, but I wasn’t actually trying.
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 2-3
Turning point or special circumstance? Starting to write for (in)courage, as well as attending Blissdom. But I hope there’s a bigger turning point in the future!

I stumbled upon this updated blog post today, I had initially shared my blog and income when I was about 4 months in I believe here. I figured I would chime in with an update and that time does improve things. So much!!!
How old is your blog? 2 years old

Niche? Home decor and DIY home projects

Pageviews per month? I am at 26,000 per month or so now.

Monthly income? I make around $2,500 per month. Sometimes over that, for the last few months it has been around there. Not to the full time status yet, but something is more than nothing 🙂

Main income streams? It is difficult to judge my income from just one place. I get paid with my blog, ads, sponsored content, paid contributing jobs, paid features, affiliate programs and links, and a few other smaller avenues. I think the best way to earn an income is to have your hand in a few places.

How long before you made money? I think I was in month 3 or so when I earned a tiny bit of income. I did not really earning more than pennies until after I hit my 1 year mark. Year 2 started and things took off.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I spend about 2 hours on social media and promotion, 2 hours writing a day and for me as a home decor blogger 2 or 3 hours a day taking pictures, editing pictures decorating or making home decor projects or crafts.

Turning point or special circumstance? My turning point was after I hit 1 year. I am not sure if it was me figuring things out, relaxing, or trying new things. But I finally began making money, having my site gain traction, having brands contact me and getting paid for content. It was a situation of the perfect storm with all of it coming together.

Just stick with it. I just hit 2 years, and I still have so much to learn and grow. However, I see where I was in the beginning, at 1 year in and to now. I am beyond excited to see what will happen this year. Blogging can be intimidating and exhausting. But if you start setting things up you can create your own career and that is very rewarding. I am still building mine, but I have a plan of attack.

Thanks for the link Amy! I think the first money Abby made from her blog was in month 4 — $8 from Google Adsense! We didn’t start sharing income reports until month 13 and in month 25 we both started working on the blog full time +. Only then did it become a full time income for our family. I would say that it was much harder to get to $1,000/month in revenue than it was to get from $1,000/month to $10,000/month. It’s a lot of work for little or no money for a long time (at least for us) but then momentum starts to build and it becomes much easier to grow traffic and revenue.

I’m a huge fan of Bjork and Lindsay and I love what Bjork always says… Just get 1% better each day. No one is great at this blogging thing at first. Those that stick with it and improve little by little do well in the long run.

I’m a stay at home mom and as a hobby I make custom invitations and stationery. So far, I’ve only designed for friends and family. I’d love to turn my hobby into a side job to make some extra money. However, a lot of custom invites on etsy are so cheap, I feel like I can’t compete! I’ve thought of possibly starting a blog detailing my designs and how I make them, rather than selling them. Which avenue do you think would be more lucrative….blogging and giving away my designs, or starting my own site where I sell them (I’m not looking to do weddings; rather kid birthdays, christenings, showers, etc. All of which sell fairly cheap on etsy!)

Hi, I’ve just started a blog I am from England and 21 years old. I’m a little popular on the internet for videos I’d do, I’d say about 1.2 million people have seen my videos at least once. But this is not on one platform or an explosion at once but rather small little eruptions on the internet.

Anyway I’ve made a blog about life and my take on it. For e.g being yourself etc promoting individuality etc.
I also am going to feature stories around the internet etc that have gone viral.

I just want to ask I’m doing this because I enjoy it but do you think I could make money of it?

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? A couple of hours every other evening or so.

Turning point or special circumstance? Nothing yet.

I am really confused how some of the newer blogs (< 6 months) mentioned here are making money already with AdSense? Is their 6 month requirement only for the Blogger platform? Because I am on Blogger, in the US, and am not able to use AdSense until mine is 6 months old. I really would love to start hosting ads on my page but can't figure out if I can yet.

How old is your blog? 6 days
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Popular social stories
How many pageviews do you get a month? 4k in first 6 days
What is your monthly income? $10 in 6 days
What is/are your main income stream/s? Adsense only, looking to add outbrain or taboola
How long did it take before you started making money? 1 day
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? 1 hour
What was your turning point? Haven’t had one. I’m just trying to figure out how to drive more traffic other than waiting for a post to go viral.

My blogs are really direct response sites so the normal traffic comes from the search engines. I have thought about creating a readership blog with adsense and affiliate offers but that’s something I never really wanted to do.

I use Optimize Press as my wordpress theme and it makes creating websites a lot easier than the old html pages. Thank you Amy, though for sharing the method you are using.

This is interesting to see the time different people put in as well as the time elapsed before things financially started happening. I am naturally a very impatient person. I want everything done yesterday. And to see that the only way to have any kind of monetary success with blogging is time. My goal is to earn enough to continue doing home improvement, decorating and DIY projects. To cover the cost through my blog is my ultimate goal. I guess mine is still a waiting game…

How old is your blog? 6 months old

Niche? DIY, home decor, slightly family life

Pageviews per month? 2,000

Monthly income? $35 so far

Main income streams? Adsense

How long before you made money?

I guess officially I made $1 about a month in. But the past month is where the rest of my earnings have come in.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?

10-15, during my kids nap time and sometimes in the evening. And then a good 5-7 hours on weekends working on home DIY projects to feature and write about.

Turning point or special circumstance?

I guess I have not hit my big turning point yet. I am getting my blog out there, meeting other similar content bloggers. Applying to have my posts featured. I just started with Facebook and twitter (a few days ago). I am still finding my way. But the thing that makes me feel it is going to grow is the fact that within the last month a shift in page views, inquires on being featured on larger blogs, and co hosting things has become much larger. Seeing there may be room for me in blogging is very encouraging. And the fact that more then my Mom and Husband comment is very exciting!

– How old is your blog? ~5months
– Niche? Living in a converted rv. Focused on Europe (first blog in Dutch to write specifically on this topic )
– Pageviews per month?
Sloooowwllyyy rising. Just so you can get an idea;
Nov 26
Dec 223
Jan 452
Feb 683
March 438 (website was down for about 1,5 week, because of *uhm* me accidentally removing the website)
April 1039
Averaging 572/month

– Monthly income?
Same as the pageviews. Payout is way lower than an English blog, so I need a lot more visitors and a different income strategy.
Dec = 0,2
Jan = 0,77
Feb = 1,53
March = 1,92
April = 5,78 EUR
Average = 1,65 EUR/month

– Main income streams?
Only Adsense. Planning on broadening my income streams with ebooks & selling classified adds, as clicking on adds throughout blogposts is not so popular as in e.g America. Most people don’t even notice they’re there 🙂 Based on my growth, I calculated I’ll need 50 years to earn 500 euro a month through Adsense. Wake up call, change strategy 😀

– How long before you made money? With Adsense almost immediately, eventhough it was ~0,01 cents every couple of days. I wonder if it’s correct. I earned money while my site was down *-) So eventough you don’t plan on monetizing your site yet, implementing adsense doesn’t hurt. At least it will pay back your domain name fee or something 😀

– Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Previously about a post or informative page per 2 weeks. I’d spend more time on gathering information than actually writing posts. Currently I’m trying to build a database with blogposts that’ll publish twice a week. Now I have time on my hands. This will give me a break in busier times and it motivates me, knowing I have a stack of posts ready.

– Turning point or special circumstance? This month I started realizing more that I need to treat it as a business or a job, if I want to make serious money from it. That’s why my hourly working rate increased from about an hour a day to about 6-8 hours a day.

I have a blog that is now having 30.000 pageviews a month, but I still don’t make money with it. It’s like a GQ magazine, with all the kinds of things men like: cars, sports, women, beer, rock. It’s a wordpress blog. Which one is the best platform for monetizing? Specially when it’s a blog with some adult content (nothing porn – far away from this)?

Turning point or special circumstance? Reasonable at seo websites . This blog is just a very small accommodation affiliate website that I no longer do any work on , it just earns me a small amount of passive income each month . I am planning stages on another blog and I also have just publishing kindle books , looking at building this passive income stream also .

I think it is really awesome everybody is commenting and helping other people .

This story of success is inspirational and not usual. I am 100% new to blogging and don’t have much time to devote to it. But I try to get at least 1 post up per week. Do you think your niche has been a big factor in the growth of your readership? Or is it your content? You didn’t say how much blogging you do. And you didn’t name your blog for me to check out. Thanks.

Turning point or special circumstance? Reviews with watermarked photos. Commenting on other blogs (not in a spamming way). Always revising, looking for new material….currently researching transitioning to WordPress and biting the bullet soon!

So I was wondering… I’m a 16 year and I really would like to start blogging. I also wouldn’t mind making a little bit of spare change from it as well. The only thing I’m worried about is my blog and opinions not getting any views because I’m young. And if I don’t get views from an older population because I’m too young do young people even read blogs?

Of course teenagers read blogs, maybe even those younger. You’re here aren’t you! That should be encouraging. I would say GO FOR IT! Worst case scenario is you get experience in something that could steer your future passions and choices in classes and college.

Content is key – no matter what your age, sex, race, nationality or other criteria.

If you provide quality content with which your target market can identify and relate, they will read what you have to say.

Do some research, look for a market you feel genuinely passionate about and get to work.

May I just add that, as Amy said way up front, you will get out what you put into it.
Bearing that in mind, IMO, writing is not a hobby, a pastime, a job, a career, or even a passion… writing is a compulsion!
Writers will write whether they are making money out of it or not. Which is what is so great about blogs, they provide an outlet that was not available to writers in the pre-Internet, pre-blog days.
If you do it just for the money, it will be hard to keep it up in the long term because writing is hard work and putting your opinions out to the world carries a certain amount of responsibility.

Consider this. If writing is just going to be hobby or a pastime to you, you will make as much out of writing as you would out of any other hobby or pastime.

Niche? I release my original amateur pictures into the public domain through my photo blog

Pageviews per month? 8,000-12,000

Monthly income? $15-$45 (really fluctuates), I guess my niche has less advertisers so I really get a lot of clicks but really really small revenue from it.

Main income streams? Adsense only

How long before you made money? after 6 months (lol)

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? about 3-6 hours per weeks, usually after work

Turning point or special circumstance? Once in a while someone features my photo blog in their blog posts and I get a spike on views and clicks which is sweet! There are also days when some of my published posts just get a lot of views for few hours then it goes down. I guess this is when another blogger uses my pictures and creates a backlink to my blog. This happens atleast once a week.

Amy…I have been writing for many years. I do better with fiction although I have written for industry. I would like to create a blog similar to Dickens serial stories tied to daily life in Neighborhood USA. It could be anywhere. Husbands and wives live out their lives day by day, good times and bad, considering issues of health care, dought, corrupt city governments, neighbors, divorce, vacations, and gossip. My audiance will be readers who might like the adventures of Peter Mayle as he moves to a small town and buys a fixer in a foreign country, meeing all types of people and describing wonderful food along the way. It is a bit broad in scope but I have been writing for a while. I plan to write a chapter a week, possibly more often. Your thoughts? My hope is that people will be waiting for each new chapter.

Pageviews per month? Just checked google analytics… says I had 213 this first month.

Monthly income? $0!

Main income streams? Just joined adsense about a week ago.

How long before you made money? N/A

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? So far I only have 3 or 4 posts. I’m trying to learn CSS and WordPress in general at the same time. I’ve never blogged and don’t yet know anyone who has/does. So not very much time blogging, but alot of time on youtube and google trying to figure it out.

Turning point or special circumstance? I am a father of three young daughters. I recently left my post as Sous chef at a local restaurant, a job that required many 14-18 hour days because I didn’t want to miss my daughters’ childhoods. I decided tucking them in and having dinner at home was more important than anything i could do in a restaurant, or anywhere else. That said, after 20 years in a kitchen, I don’t know how to go to bed before 3am! The girls and my wife sleep. I read/ write. It’s nice.

That is so admirable of you! I guess after many years of working, you’re in a great position to put your ladies before work. On the contrary, my hubby and I are young and are now try to build our lives together so he works in the oilfield and is away from home and us quite often. I blog about my life as an oilfield wife over at The Oilfield Mom Survival Guide (http://www.oilfieldmomsurvivalguide.com).

Turning point or special circumstance? Blog focuses on unique indie artists (so not every indie artist would be a good fit for the blog). I live in a sort of remote location so attending events is difficult with having a full-time, bill paying day job. Although online research can be done at anytime, traveling to the events is limited to evenings, weekends, holidays, etc.

Great article, and one that is very motivating for me (and others) to see where they are going and how they can set goals.

How old is your blog?

I have quite a few blogs. My oldest and first is about 3 years old. After I made my first blog and realized that I was making money, I started making more blogs.

Niche? Education and Travel

Pageviews per month? 100,000 – 200,000

Monthly income? My main blog makes around $1,000 a month through Google Adsense alone and I see that number steadily growing. My other blogs make less, but they are catching up.

Main income streams?

I use Adsense and Amazon Associates. I have dabbled with creating an eBook or two as well. I also sell products through my blogs and am thinking of doing consulting.

How long before you made money?

I started making a few pennies right away. I found an excellent niche and ran with it. After a couple of months, the money started really coming in. After a year or two, the money grew exponentially. I have found the longer you go at it, the faster the income rolls in. In other words, keep at it!

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?

I spend about 2 hours or so a day blogging at least. Some days I work for eight hours.

Turning point or special circumstance?

I have seen my blogs jump in income the longer they sit and the more they are worked on. For example, my first and largest blog doubled its daily income overnight without stopping. The secret: work hard on your blog and don’t give up. It’s slow at first, but if you treat it as a job and really love blogging, you are going to end up making money. My blogs make enough money to let me travel the world and they allow me to spend time doing something that I truly love.

This was an great article to read. I just started a blog/ social media experiment. My niche is donations and my site has been live for close to 48hrs. Making money isn’t at all a priority for the project as I currently write for a huge online dating company but I thought it would be neat to see a Pay it Forward so to speak kind of small scale donation experiment online. I’ve seen a ton of insane GoFundMe campaigns that are literally for people wanting Ferrari’s and all kinds of things and for some odd reason they seem to do okay. At any rate, in my first 48hrs live I’ve had a little over 1k website hits & 4 people make donations in total of a bit over $8. I’m not entirely sure what to expect from the concept as there is no goal but I’m documenting everyday of the project and my interactions with people I chat with via Twitter, Facebook, and all around my internet travels. I think if things go well I will pick a “Changer” as I’m referring to people that have donated throughout the process and give that person my entire month of adsense income. I’m on a computer at least 10 – 12 hrs a day anyway so I figured why not. 🙂

X How old is your blog?
About a week :D, yeah, I just started .
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about?
explore the physical, mental and emotional paths to wellness.

X How many pageviews do you get a month?
My blog is new so this week I got about 120 views
after sharing it.

X What is your monthly income?
I don’t really get paid right now, I am thinking to build the blog first then add the ads and stuff

X What is/are your main income stream/s?
Nothing really, I am still in college but I am going to be an architect

X How long did it take before you started making money?
😀 you tell me how long would it take, it’s not about the money though

X How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related
activities (networking, etc.)? 3 hours
What was your turning point? Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? I am waiting for it xD

XIs there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule?
I try my best, and the visitors are the ones to judge

How old is your blog?
**7 months
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Recipes, food, etc.
How many pageviews do you get a month?
**40,000
What is your monthly income?
**$0 $0 $0
What is/are your main income stream/s?
**None yet, focusing first on content development and generating an audience
How long did it take before you started making money?
**Haven’t Yet
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)?
** 1-4 hrs a day, sometimes 8 or more on a weekend
What was your turning point? Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule?
** I haven’t yet had a turning point. In order to make $$, I need an advertising network. Tried Chitika and I get pennies, not worth it (probably going to remove it). Google Adsense has been problematic and just puts me in a holding pattern, so I’m likely not going there. I need to find other revenue streams, but haven’t had the time to develop them (like creating an Amazon estore). Once I have my website content where I need it to be, I’ll have a dedicated focus to advertising and partnerships. Since I work on this after my regularly scheduled 40 hrs/week job and caring for my family, the $$ isn’t yet a priority.

Monthly income? The first few months $2-$3; December $100. Definitely a slow process, but worth every penny because I LOVE writing this blog!

Main income streams? Google AdSense, working on affiliates through Wayfair and Bundle of the Week.

How long before you made money? I haven’t received my first check yet because I just hit the $100 minimum from Google in December (at $177)

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Depends. Some days I will spend 6-7 hours a day (especially Thursday – Saturday, then 2 or so the rest of the week.

Turning point or special circumstance? I started to question whether writing my blog was worth it when I started a new part-time job. I still enjoyed writing about organizing and simplifying, and though I wasn’t in it to become a millionaire, I questioned whether the time was worth it. Then I was able to join two different facebook groups that have veteran organizing bloggers in them, and that has made a tremendous difference. They encourage, support, and help share/link-to what we would like more publicized. Also, working on my Pinterest board has also drawn more traffic than I could’ve ever imagined. Pictures do wonders when it comes to organizing! My traffic tripled when I spent more time pinning. I also joined a closed Pinterest group for organizers that has drawn LOTS of traffic as well. I have learned that challenging myself in the blogging world makes all the difference. Being willing to try something new to get more traffic to your blog, is worth it. Yes, trial and error will occur, but it only makes you a better blogger. Networking is a beautiful thing – finding others who are doing the same thing you are, but may be taking it in a slightly different direction, offers that “office” support you need while working from home. Now having reached some of my goals, now I can challenge myself with more!

I just wanted to say, as a pretty new blogger, your response to the prompt was really inspiring and encouraging! I’m happy that you’ve decided to stick with what you’re doing, and it seems like your positive attitude will continue to take you far 🙂

How long before you made money? It took me a year to begin earning a steady income.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 2

Turning point or special circumstance? Turning point was actually when I moved from Blogger to WordPress.org. It seemed like things really took off from there and I too began taking it a lot more seriously.

What about managed WordPress hosting? Can you put ads on a managed hosting? And if you can’t have managed hosting, how do I know how to do updates and all that stuff? I looked into the Bluehost but I do not want to have to pay all of that upfront. I know that GoDaddy is also recommended on WordPress.org and they have month to month plans.

How long before you made money? making pennys from the start, very minimal

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I pay a writer on elance to write 3 blog posts per day, 7 days a week. i’m hoping eventually my income will catch up to the rate I pay the writer and the blog will be self sufficient.

Does anyone else have experience with a blog paying for it’s writers and advertising? Currently I spend around $100 a week on blog content and facebook advertising.

Monthly income? Just made made my first affiliate sale for a grand total of $0.45!

Main income streams? Just started monetizing with Amazon affiliate program

How long before you made money? I’m not really “making money”, but my newly earned $0.45 is sitting in my Amazon affiliate account as of a few weeks ago, about 4 months into the blog

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? About 1-2 hours per day

Turning point or special circumstance? I’d say my blog is still developing and haven’t hit any point that I could call a turning point, but signing up for the Amazon affiliate program and seeing the first sale really opened my eyes to the possibilities.

Monthly income? Monthly income is not consistent so I will just post total 7 month income = $305 or about $44/month

Main income streams? Affiliate marketing

How long before you made money? 3 weeks

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I am very busy with the job that I am trying to escape so daily is not a possibility for me so I will put monthly I spend anywhere from 5 to 10 hours on the blog.

Turning point or special circumstance? Special circumstances are I have made $305 in 7 months with very little effort and the past 3 months I have been traveling for my day job with almost no attention put towards the blog. Someone that worked hard and put in real effort could potentially see much larger numbers.

I have been blogging for a couple of years, but I just started a new blog in July. It’s early days but i am confident that it will do well. I am currently averaging 100 unique visits a day, and the main challenge for me is to keep adding unique content, while I network.

I am inspired by the blogging stories in this community, and i can relate with those who are struggling, because i went through that when i started .

Those that are killing it are such an inspiration to me, and it just tells me that if they can do it, so can i with dediction and hard work.

Hi there, really need some help, ive had my blog for about 5 months and havent posted that much. But really i want to take it up seriously now but dont know where to start! 🙁 Please someone email me with help!

I have been using wordpress and because I am so new to this I really do not know what I am doing. So I wanted affiliate marketing and tried to add a banner ad, but found out you can’t do that with your free wordpress. I was told to get wordpress.org and pay someone to host the site. So I started looking at websites in my niche to see who they use…and it seems like they use companies that charge over 100.00 with a promised amount of visits per month. I wouldn’t mind that once I get this up…but what do I do for now? Isn’t there a less expensive way to run a blog and have affiliate links and banners?

Yes I agree with you, there are so many factors to be considered to make sure that a blog can generate income online.

Such as

on-page and offpage optimization
social network marketing
backlinking
article marketing.
and still many more..

But I know they are just part of life’s challenge.
As long as you have the passion and interest in what you are doing online and you keep on moving forward.. I know that there is still something that awaits you ahead.

What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about?
Helping readers save money by couponing, DIY crafts, recipes for families, friendly websites for kids, freebies, DIY birthday parties, and LOTS of deals/sales from local stores and online:)

How many pageviews do you get a month?
a little over 2,000

What is your monthly income?
so far made $4.69 and now steadily making an average of $0.02 a day, on the highest was $0.86! I have gotten $15 from Amazon…I need help!

What is/are your main income stream/s?
So far Amazon and Google Adsense, looking for ideas for more:)

How long did it take before you started making money?
Honestly just in the past few months, haven’t received any checks, but got a $15 credit from Amazon from a 6 month old post that recently just started receiving a few hundred hits!

How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)?
1-3 hours….when I first started it was 5-10 hours a day until I go the right look! I had no clue what to do, researched how to make the look of my blog through other sites (like yours) and used free photo editors like pixlr.com. I knew nothing about blogging when I started

What was your turning point?
I am still awaiting one. I have found that Facebook and Pinterest have brought more traffic, but slowly…but that is ok!

Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth?
I notice the holiday season (November – January) brings more traffic, now I need to learn how to make it count:) Still a lot to learn!

Main income streams? Mainly selling my own ebooks & digital products from the blog, and some affiliate income

How long before you made money? About 6 months

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Anywhere from 2 to 10 or more, but it’s generally by choice because it never feels like work 🙂

Special circumstance? No, I don’t think there’s any special circumstance with my blog. I think if you really want to make good money from a blog, you need to make your own products that solve your reader’s problems.

Turning point? Releasing my first products was what got me from making no money to making a couple grand per month – enough to live on! Plus I did get a big boost earlier this year when I participated in a couple of bundle sale with a bunch of other bloggers and got a ton of exposure and backlinks. It grew my traffic and income pretty fast from making around $2000 a month to where I am now.

Thanks a lot for this great post which I did find very helpful really towards monetizing my website. I have just only recently started writing online. I am currently getting about 300-400 page views and 100 unique visitors to my website. I have only half a dozen of articles or so on the website. Should I start putting up some ads now or wait until I have some 20-30 articles on the website?

I am not a writer to be honest but I can actually write on most topics I have a passion about. I can also write on topics that I do not know a lot about by doing research. However, with regards to monetizing a blog/website I think that there are lots more to do in addition to writing unique and helpful content.

I have next to zero technical knowledge about web design. But I know how to integrate different kinds of ads, promoting a blog/website, etc. Do you really suggest that I purchase a more professional looking theme? Even though I am not a native speaker of English language yet I am confident enough that I can communicate with my readers well through my writing.

Looking for your valuable advice and opinions. Thanks a lot for reading and replying :).

I have decided to start a blog – mostly because my family is about to begin an amazing journey and I think it would be beneficial to others if we were regularly document and share our trials and triumphs during this very early stage.

My Question: I am missing something – what is taking 4 hours a day? I see some who listed 1-2 hours a day, and most to be listing 4-5 hours a day working on their blog? Please fill me in? I will be as prepared as possible before launching!
(PS – Super excited that the first domain that I came up with, is available, and fits the criteria’s of Amy’s name choosing recommendations)

The 4-5 hours is research, writing, photographing, and networking (facebook, twitter and discussion on other blogs). Some people are cooking, crafting, sewing, or creating other tutorials. Depending on what you blog about, the time demand will be different.

i’m known Online as FROMiVC, and Yes, Monetizing Your blog is the Key to Making Money Online. it’s no good monetizing if You dont have enough traffic. Who writes their online blogs just for the sake of it? Do have a facebook or twitter audience and just write for friends and families? Why don’t You become an Amazon Associate and have banners on Your blog, building a list is important and also video marketing. Anyways i’m just giving anyone New to online blogging tips and strategies to follow. Make Your Number One Focus TRAFFIC. follow and contact FROMiVC

How old is your blog? 6 months
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Healthy food blog.
How many pageviews do you get a month? 70,000
What is your monthly income? Last month $86
What is/are your main income stream/s? Google AdSense, Blogads & BuySellAds
How long did it take before you started making money? 4 months. I haven’t tried to put ads until then.
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? 1-2

Hi Amy,
Nice read! It’s very heart warming and encouraging after reading through most of the comments given by the bloggers. To answer the list of questions , here it goes…

How old is your blog? < a month old
Niche? Mainly blog journey of aspiring work from home newbies, also some tips to avoid scam etc.
Pageviews per month? Pathetic. Till now < 500 and mainly from article submission to different sites and average stay rate is about 2 mins.

Monthly income? $0. That's why I'm here 🙂

Main income streams? Affiliate marketing

How long before you made money? $0. Not yet. But I know some day it will come. (when? months? years? 🙂 )
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 3-4 hrs
Turning point or special circumstance? No major turning point yet, but previously I started a blog 2 years ago with a luke warm attitiude and rejected by Google Adsense. But now I wanted to try again with a different blog but till now no luck same fate.

Niche? Health and Wellness based upon Weston A. Price and Nourishing Traditions

Pageviews per month? Last month was 800

Monthly income? Last month $3.46 🙂

Main income streams? Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliate

How long before you made money? I have had a slow trickle since I started but nothing impressive.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1 hour

Turning point or special circumstance? None yet, just a slow steady growth. I will keep plugging away because I love this job so much! I hope to hit a turning point by the end of my first year and start earning at least a couple hundred dollars a month. My hope is to long term turn this into a full time income; but right now with my preschoolers at home I am not willing to put in full time hours. That will come later.

niche — Juicing
how old is blog- 5 months
How many pageviews do you get a month? – 66k
monthly income- $400
how long blogging- 2-5 hr a day
income stream- adsense / amazon

For the first 4 months I really didn’t bother checking traffic, or putting up ads. I just recently started putting up adsense and am debating on selling direct ad space or keeping adsense. I’m also going to be coming out with a video and ebook soon as I feel that would provide my visitors with better info.

Traffic seems to be increasing very fast though. I started a forum and newsletter to keep my visitors engaged and that seems to be working well for now. I need to get back to the focus of writing content and not focusing on my traffic as much. After all, the content is what drives them and keeps them coming back.

Today I had 281 page views — my most so far. I was trolling the web for information on how many page views you needed before you could consider monetizing and came across the article. I am interested to learn how many other blogs are writing about coupons and money-saving deals.

How old is your blog?
1 year old
Niche?
Music
Pageviews per month?
200
Monthly income?
$1.00
Main income streams?
Ad Sense/ Link bucks
How long before you made money?
day 1
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
once a week- im not a daily blogger consistent guy. im not even a monthly blogger consistent guy
Turning point or special circumstance?
i started a blog before and it seriously went from having 30 viewers to 600 suddenly.I put a lot of research into why that happened and it really helped me understand the basics of inbound marketing. so i decided it was time to create one with some decent material and see if i really understand!

How old is your blog?
1 day
Niche?
Economics
Pageviews per month?
6
Monthly income?
$0
Main income streams?
0
How long before you made money?
0
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
4
Turning point or special circumstance?
none

I have been blogging on other blogs of mine for about a year now however I havent had much success. Im not sure what it is that I need to be doing differently to actually be heard. I am trying a new strategy of making a blog about completing a goal.

Wow. Blogging is not for me. Not only am I NOT a talented writer, haha, there is not much money made in it. I am wondering why people turn to blogging for income vs. doing something else from home (like starting your own business?)

I liked the responses when people said they did it for the sheer joy of writing… and didn’t care about income. I also am a teensy bit jealous of bloggers who write and just make me want to come back for more because they have skills.

I created a side business — it started out more of a hobby, and I spend 1 hour on it maybe per day, on weekends when I have more time maybe 2 hours a day to do social media or email blasts, but I pull in about $5,000 – $7,000 per month in sales. Not a lot, when you subtract about half that for the cost of goods, postage, etc. But decent for a side business that I only spend an hour on per day. (that hour includes fulfillment, too!).

I have no writing skills, but I have the desire to be written about, and have tried to have bloggers do giveaways about my product but then realize that I have to go through a network and pay money. I don’t like that… I was turned off by that, because I felt that it was mutually beneficial for the blogger, the blogger’s audience, and for myself, to have them try my product, then write about it, and then offer it to their audience for free in a giveaway. So I am still looking for bloggers who aren’t affiliated with a network that charges money for giveaways. Any recommendations?

I am in more natural health, wellness, etc. so it is more of a niche market.

Main income streams? Mostly from Google Adsense, a bit from Amazon Affiliates. I’ve tried banner ads from affiliate networks such as cj.com and shareasale.com but without much return.. adsense seems to be bringing the highest CPC as of yet…

How long before you made money? We started posting ads on the blog about a year into it.. and money started coming almost immediately due to the traffic that was built up however initially it was in the order of 50 a month then started to build up.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? It used to be 10+ hrs/week, now it’s barely 2 hrs/month.. no time due to full time job/other responsibilities.

What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about?
arts/crafts/food

How many pageviews do you get a month?
they average 120k to 180k

What is your monthly income?
adsense: 100 to 150 per month,
izea media: 50 to 60 per month
amazon affiliate links (this one is all over the board, usually between $10 and 20, but dec 2012 it was $60
socialspark: around 300 per month
lijit and other affiliates: hardly anything
misc other sponsored posts and other opportunities: these range from ~$35 plus the product to 100 to 200 per post. (through clever girls, sitsgirls, and a product ambassadorship.)
side bar advertisements: I don’t push these because they really are more work than they are worth, but I usually have 1 or 2 per month and they vary $10 to 30 per month

What is/are your main income stream/s?
see list above

How long did it take before you started making money?
almost a year, received 1st adsense check in feb ’12 and have gotten them monthly since then.

How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)?
A lot: I estimate about 25 hours on writing content, social media, answering emails and interacting on other blogs. Also since I have an Arts/craft/diy blog, I spend countless additional hours creating the projects, photographing and editing the photos. Each project is different, it could be a simple recipe that only took an hour to create and 15 minutes to photograph, plus another hour to edit the photos or a quilt, or a craft that ranges in minutes to days to create.

What was your turning point? Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule?

My turning point seemed to be jan/feb of 2012. I am not sure what happened exactly, I just think the amount of my quality content and pretty pictures started to bring in a lot of traffic. i just peeked at my Google analytics for dec/jan and the traffic from pinterest and organic/google were almost equal. (the direct traffic was about 10k higher, but I don’t really understand where this traffic comes from, is it when people left click and open in a new tab?)

I really feel like I should be making more from google adsense, my cpc average over time is .48 and I just don’t know how to increase that without changing my content… any thoughts on this?

I just found this article and your blog. Thank you for this post. I am so glad to see so many people share. But it does make me a bit bummed out that I seem to be underperforming. I thought I was average, but it seems many more people are making money.

How old is your blog? Almost 3 years, but I have been more consistent the past year and a half.

Niche? Nutrition and food, with some lifestyle thrown in.

Pageviews per month? 4000-5000

Monthly income? Pretty much ZERO. I have had google adsense on there for a long time and as of today I have made just over $18.00. I thought getting a few cents a day was normal, but seeing how other people are making $50 or more a month I feel like I must be doing something wrong.

I will say that I got very busy during the latter part of last year and I slowed down a lot, but even before that when I was posting a lot, linking up, commenting, etc. I was still only making a few cents a day.

Main income streams? Google adsense, amazon affiliate, a couple other affiliates

How long before you made money? Considering I have not gotten a check, I will say I haven’t. Although I should mention that someone did happen to click through on my amazon affiliate link and ended up doing a big order. I think I just got lucky and they happened to order right after. But the things they ordered had nothing to do with my blog. So I got a few bucks from that.

@suzyhomemaker: If you are blogging about food, my recommendation is to make sure your food photos are “Pinterest ready” meaning well composed and no lighting issues. Then, if you don’t already have a Pinterest account, get one and start working on building up your Pinterest followers, That way, you can pin your own stuff (along with other things of course) and this will definitely help bring in more traffic.
~Jamie

How old is your blog? 1 month and 5 days
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Cooking recipes, beauty product review, baby product review
How many pageviews do you get a month? 1980
What is your monthly income? NIL
What is/are your main income stream/s? Food
How long did it take before you started making money? NA
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? 5 hours per day except sundays
What was your turning point? Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule? Nothing

Dear Amy

Loved reading your blog and other bloggers experience. I would like to stay focused on my blog and am working hard towards it. You blog has good info for beginners like me. Thank u.

What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about?
Life… Renovations, before and after, recipes, decor, etc.

How many pageviews do you get a month?
Well I’ve only had 3500 since I started my blog…. But it was just for fun at first.

What is your monthly income?
$0… Except for one sale through my etsy store $15 (I just started my store 2 months ago)

What is/are your main income stream/s?
Etsy?

How long did it take before you started making money?
1 month of opening the store.

How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)?
1 – 2 … Unfortunately I work full time 🙁

What was your turning point? Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule?

Recently I started posting more personal stuff and linking less to other websites or Pinterest pics. I find the more personal you get the better. With the start of 2013 I’ve made it my goal to start making money full time and possibly work part time on the side or not at all. I’ve just started commenting on other websites, hosting giveaways (one in particular with a local spa for a giveaway) and asking for help. I asked a popular blog how they got where they are and they pointed me here as one of their ways. I’m really looking for more comments and followers and then hopefully the income. I’ve found this post very useful and I now have hope that it is possible to follow this dream!

Amy, I am having trouble coming up with a name and cannot find much info about it other than yours (which is great by the way!) I was thinking of naming my blog something like: The Parrish’s On Pintin Pike or The Rippy’s on Roberts Road. Except of course I would use MY name & road. Would this be a good idea? Being this is a blog about interior decorating on a budget I would be showing pics/tours of our home. Should I worry about safety in doing this? Would love your or everyone’s advice on this! Thanks!

Hi Christy! When you say you found my info, did you mean this post? I’d keep it as short and sweet as possible. So, if possible, I’d maybe use Pintin Pike or The Rippy’s (split those in half). If you haven’t read the post I linked to there, it’s got all my tips for choosing a domain. 🙂

Thanks for this article. I started a blog 7 months ago, but was not happy with the free templates, so immediately hired a affordably priced blog designer. I put my blogging on hold thinking I would start when my new design and logo was ready. Why work for page views when you don’t like the impression you’re giving? My designer was overbooked and my design took 4 months compared to the expectation I had of 2 weeks. I am juggling a part time job and motherhood and now trying to find time to blog/write. I’ve now taken on getting my father in law’s website onto a WordPress blog from his current professionally designed website (read-very expensive) because its not generating the traffic and income he needs. He’s a consultant so a blog should be great for his niche. That’s now set me back from focusing on my blog.

Back to my points and reasons for responding… I love to take trips with my family and thought blogging about it and helping others would be a great way to earn an income. I see so many posting about the let-down of the hourly wage, but for a mom who wants to work from home and quit her out of home part-time job by talking about what she’s interested in and socializing with others, it feels like a win-win for me. I would love to work from home for 2-4 hours and bring in even half of what I make now. After reading this article and its comments I feel more assured that I’m on the right track.

A question, if you plan to sell your own items, do you find it still a good idea to run Adsense in addition to your own product ads? Do people find that Adsense takes away from personal sales or suggests competing products?

Great question, Kim. I have absolutely heard others say that AdSense definitely decreased sales of their own products. It really varies from blogger to blogger and niche to niche so experimentation is key. One thing to keep in mind is that AdSense takes people away from your site. All the best in 2013!

This is really illuminating. It has confirmed to me that it is very, very difficult to make a living wage from a blog. As far as I can see, most people are earning maybe a couple of hundred dollars a month for working 2-4 hours a day. I have tried setting up a few web sites in diverse areas and have not had much joy at all. Fortunately, I have also discovered I can earn anything for $300 upwards a day as a translator, so I think this is the line of business I will pursue and leave blogging as a hobby, which might bring me in a little bit of money now and then.

I’m glad it was helpful, Chris. Yes, it is quite a bit of work and if you don’t have joy, it really can be a drag. As a hobby, you might find it will eventually grow into something more, but it sounds like you have a good handle on your direction. All the best.

Amy — thank you so much for creating this awesome sharing experience! And thanks to everyone for your stories, tips, and sufferings. I’m amazed by the numbers, the effort, and the huge variety of bloggers who have responded! I’ll share my story:
How old is your blog? — 18 months
Niche? food, recipes, nutrition – and me 🙂
Pageviews per month? ~5,000
Monthly income? — $0
Main income streams? — none yet; hoping to go self-hosted soon and take on FoodBuzz and BlogHer and others as available

Turning point or special circumstance? I took an online WordPress class, and immediately discovered I could not take advantage of any of his tips/tricks b/c I was not yet self-hosted. That was a wake-up call to finally make the decision to go for it!

Turning point or special circumstance? This last year I seem to have turned a little bit of a corner as I have learned more about SEO and I am hoping to turn another corner soon. I now need to figure out how to redirect my blogger blog into wordpress without losing all my google love.

This is very very encouraging everyone 🙂 I’m inspired by all the bloggers here!
Just started adsense on my blog and trying to networking though I can’t seem to get many views any good tips to boost traffic?

Not knowing what your blog’s content is, it’s hard to say. I think each blog has its niche. Like my food blog has Pinterest. Amy had another good post about how to have google alerts for who is talking about your blog. I’ll try to find that. It helped me discover Pinterest. If you can find out who’s talking about you, then you can perhaps figure out more of who your audience is and which parts of your blog appeal to them.

HOW OLD IS YOUR BLOG? My blog is just over 2 years old.
NICHE? food/recipes
PAGEVIEWS PER MONTH? 332,000 last month
MONTHLY INCOME? $0 monthly so far. Actually, probably more like -$50/month due to ingredient costs. 🙂 I’m just now looking into monetizing. I just signed up for Adsense, mainly to see what the ad space is worth, and then I’m going to look into pursuing specific advertisers on my own. I think. I’m glad I found this blog post, Amy. (How have not seen it before? I’m not good at reading my emails.)
MAIN INCOME STREAMS? N/A at the moment. Just signed up with Adsense
HOW LONG BEFORE YOU MADE MONEY? 25 months in, and I’m just now monetizing. We’ll see.
HOURS BLOGGING (& related activities) PER DAY? 1.5 to 4 hours. It varies.
TURNING POINT OR SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCE? My page views have really, really taken off thanks to Pinterest. As Pinterest becomes more popular, so does my blog, or so it seems. I post pictures of all the recipes I post, so the posts are super Pinterest-friendly. This has what’s changed my mind about trying to make a little money.

You go, Kelly! 332,000 pageviews/month is awesome. Gotta love Pinterest…especially when you’re into food. Which I am. Eating it anyway. Not so much cooking it. That’s why I think we should live near each other again. So I can eat it for you. We’d make a great team. Do E and the boys ever get tired off all the yummy goodness you create? Impossible.

Loved your post in which you asked your readers about adding ads. And glad you got helpful feedback. You must keep me posted. 🙂

I’m still waiting to be approved for AdSense. I’m still a little confused. From what I’ve read it will probably take about a week. I’m glad there’s a way to easily remove the ad box if it does not work out. The responses I’ve gotten from readers was helpful and encouraging. It eased some of my weird feelings about monetizing.
As far as my family getting sick of my cooking. The boys are jaded. Ezra will try things and say he likes them, but he will often just take a bite. Max is too picky to enjoy too much. I made (and posted) these yummy mini muffins that tasted like doughnut holes. I had to force my boys to just try one. They didn’t want any more than that. Fortunately, Eddie wanted to eat them. I do with you lived closer because I WOULD share the food with you. I could take it to my neighbors, but my favorite neighbor is diabetic 🙁 and the other is a family of five and sometimes I don’t want to give that much of my goodies away. 🙂
Thanks for doing what you do, Amy. I found your post when I was googling how to make money from a food blog. Don’t you love it when you show up on the first page of a google search?

Okay, I’ve had AdSense on my blog for a little over a month. I have one small square in my side bar and one at the bottom of the first post on a page. And that has earned me $209.00. I’m averaging about 10,000 page views a day. I have not received payment yet, and honestly, I’m still not sure exactly how it will come to me, but that’s what Google AdSense says I’ve earned. So there you go. Real blogger. Money not yet real though. 🙂

Another update, in case anyone is interested. My daily page views have simmered down to about 3000-4,000 a day, or 124,000/month. With that, I’ve been averaging anywhere between $70-$100 a month with my one, relatively small Ad Sense add on my blog. This makes me happy, as I feel like my blog doesn’t look too busy AND I get to keep on buying more Dove Chocolate for my posts. 🙂

It sounds to me like someone needs to come up with a whole new strategy for making money by blogging. $3.00 an hour is way too little, for way too much work. Surely there’s a piece of this puzzle that typical bloggers aren’t aware of, because there seem to be a percent of bloggers who make a serious living doing this. I wonder, what’s their trick?

Elaine, I think a lot of it is time coupled with steady effort. In my experience (and I think in many others’), blogging is something you spend the first year or two making pennies or a few dollars per hour. Then you finally start gaining traction and the income increases, but you have to be willing to work for free for a long time before it starts to pay off. 🙁

How old is you blog? I’m a newbie to all of this, only 2 weeks
Niche? Quilting and sewing tutorials and patterns
Page views? about 240 so far
Monthly income? I have not monetized yet, I’m still reading all of Amy’s posts first! Eventually I want to sell PDFs of my patterns, as well as having ads.
Hours blogging per day? So far about 4 hours a day, but I’m still learning everything. Hopefully it eventually will be 2 hours a day.
Turning point? Hopefully I’ll have one!

This is a great thread and I am happy to see it is still going after a couple of years. Here is my info:

How old is your blog? almost 2 1/2 years old

Niche? I call it an electic food blog. It focuses on food and drink, but also travel, food history and archaeology of food (I am an agricultural anthropologist among other things), some activism (anti-genetically engineered foods and pro-sustainable agriculture and quality food), and quite a bit on warzones, as I have spent time in Iraq and Aghanistan. Not sure anyone has a blog like this. For example, I called out Mark Forgione (who won The Next Iron Chef one year) for claiming that there was no Turkey served at the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth Colony. It is almost a certainty that there was indeed turkey and proved it with source material.

Pageviews per month? 120,000

Monthly income? basically nothing, was doing Foodbuzz, making around $5.00 a month. They are all about recipes and I have some of those, but my blog goes way beyond recipes. I don’t think it was a good fit. Recently, they changed things and I secided to look at other revenue streams. Note, I just found out how many visitors and page views I was getting only very recently and had no idea. I would have been happy with 500 a month. Note that all my posts are original writing, I started the blog as a creative outlet. I do not and will not shill products in posts unless I have tried them and liked them. My blog isn’t really about shilling, in any case. I have a post about Polish soldiers killed in Afghanistan, for goodness sake.

Main income streams? was Foodbuzz. I just put up a couple amazon ads for books I like and one food product. I am looking into Google Adsense.

How long before you made money? I don’t think I have really made money yet. $5.00 a month is chump change, but I didn’t start this to make money.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 0 hours to 2-3 hours, depending. Now that I know I actually have a good audience, I will probably post more often. Up to now, I posted anywhere from one to eighteen posts in a given month. I try to write as often as possible and not need to research the revenue side of things. But, the blog is a part-time labor of love.

Turning point or special circumstance? Finding out how much traffic my blog was getting. Blew me away and has really motivated me to write more.

Hope this is useful. I like the networking suggestions that people have made, as a serious introvert, I have trouble initiating that. My advice to anyone who wants to blog is do it because it is your passion, not just to make money. And write original stuff.

Making money with adsense is directly in proportion with traffic. When my blog went from 100 visitors a day to thousands, my revenue increased as well. So the key is to have great content and work on your traffic. The revenue will follow the traffic.

How old is your blog? 10 months
Niche? Fitness and health
Pageviews per month? 330,000
Monthly income? $300
Main income streams? Commission from clothing affiliates
How long before you made money? 5 months
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 2-5 hours a day
Turning point or special circumstance? Constant networking

How old is your blog? 3 years
Niche? Technology and Tips about how to make money?
Pageviews per month? 20000
Monthly income? $100-150
Main income streams? Software Developer
How long before you made money? 5 years
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 6-8 hours
Turning point or special circumstance? n/a

Just started a blog yesterday!! I am very new to this experience but came across your blog and it is amazing the traffic and income people are making! Great work to all and check my blog out (even though it is still a work in progress). Looking forward to meeting some great people!!

this post is informed me on so much about blogging but i was wondering how does the income streams work? can you just put them up? do they contact you first? do you have to contact them first? i need to be enlightened a little bit more on that

How old is your blog: 2 weeks
Niche: Badminton Blog
Pageviews as of today: 1600 🙂
Highest page views in a day: yesterday = 377
Monthly income: 0.01 🙂
Main income streams: adsense, adbrite, amazon, adsgadget, infolinks. <—- I don`t know if this is right. To have so many
Hours blogging: 4 hours

How long before you made a cent: 2 weeks
Turning point: when I deleted my blog for one day, my traffic grew. from 20 to 70 to 110 to 220 to 377. 🙂

going to be 1 month on aug 13 and now I have more than 7000 page views. I now earn about 0.65. 🙂 It is an improvement. i only use adsense, amazon, infolinks and adsgadget but adsgadget is the number one for me. I’m sorry for flooding this section but I promise that this is my last comment on this.

I am really touched by how real many of you are on here. I have tried to be successful online many years now. I have bought numerous program and yet made nothing though I must admit that I did learn somethings that are quite useful. Now I am penniless, I have lost all online through the purchase of various work at home programs I wouldn’t like to mention them.

Through those moments, I did set up numerous websites which never amount to anything because I was expectant to make the money now! as I was promised and yet made nothing and actually gave up on signing up for paid training and now I am back to square one and ready to start once more. I am indeed glad to be among you all in this community. I now look forward to one of the things I learnt that I can succeed by working my way on other established writers blog by giving comment up there and if I contribute something worthwhile, I will at least get a link back to my blog as well.

Anyway, after spending years without achieving anything particular, I have personally rekindle the faith to succeed because by reading the testimonies and comments by Any and others in here, I feel invigorated to start once more. Currently I have began a new blog that is less than two weeks old. I have not done any SEO to it because I want to have a couple of articles in there before I put it in the search engines. My niche I suppose in education, personal development and wealth creation- I just wonder how I can make it with all these three.

With income streams, I am not thinking of any yet since I became greedy with my previous blog waiting to see the money now without not necessarily putting up so much relevant content for my readers. I have never made any income yet since I have not even had at least one page view than the one I am expecting from the good people on here to make my faith and confidence whole again.

Thanks for bringing this topic up Amy! I have several teacher bloggers I work with at http://www.TeachingBlogTrafficSchool.com and they get so frustrated with the lack of money. I try to remind them I worked hard core 100+ hours a week for 8 full months before I made much at all. The hubby was about to pull the plug, literally if I didn’t start making some returns and quick. Plus, blogging is my full-time job – most of the teachers I work next to do not have that luxury. I don’t like to post numbers because it usually gets them frustrated, but there are some who want to know the real deal (I am one of those people too), so this is a great outlet for those bloggers!

How old is your blog? Started in Feb 2011

Niche? K-12 Teaching

Pageviews per month? 200,000+

Monthly income? I made $15,000 last month (which was a record high for me, but the activity and projections show I am on track to continue that trend this month)

Main income streams? Selling teaching products on my site, affiliates, Adsense revenue, advertising, etc. (I diversify quite a bit and have over 20 sites/collaborative blogs that I maintain myself with no help.)

How long before you made money? Over 8 months before I made more than pennies.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I still work 60-70 hours a week, but that is OF MY CHOICE. I prefer to network on FB, Pinterest, and cross-promote with other bloggers rather than watch TV. I have watched maybe an hour of TV in the last month. I found something that combines fun and work for me – and would continue to do it even if the cash flow halts completely (don’t tell anyone I said that though – lol)

Turning point or special circumstance? For me, I was blogging for a few months and then scored a few guest blog posts on huge blogs, which started the ball rolling. My Facebook fan page took off after that, and a year later it is more than I ever dreamed it would be. It has continued to snowball ever since.

What a great post, I’ve just move my old blog to wp and it’s 2 months old. I’ve made my first affiliate sale. It’s great to see actual page view numbers, I’m nowhere near that and hope to be at some point.

Anthony, blogging for most people is definitely just a hobby, not a source of primary income. However, it is possible to live off of a blog if you work hard at creating good content and monetizing the site.

How old is your blog? one month.
Niche? daily musings from a recovering procrastinator; chronicling my goal to complete 50 marathons by age 50.
Pageviews per month? I don’t know the monthly average because my blog is only one month old, but so far I have had 4,000 views.
Monthly income? None! 🙂 I don’t know how to make money blogging – this is just a fun thing to do since we gave up cable. I am a full-time creative director so that is my main income stream.
Main income streams? see above. 🙂
How long before you made money? N/A
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? about 1 hour.
Turning point or special circumstance? I couldn’t sleep one night so decided to start a blog at 2:00 in the morning! And now, I am hooked.

It’s certainly informative, but not very encouraging. I had wrongly assumed that blogging would be able to bring in far more than what I’ve been reading. This is certainly and eye opener and I appreciate the honesty! It makes me realize that bloggers to state that they’re making over $10K a month are simply the exception to the rule.

What I got from this – the real motivation should be because you love blogging, not the money.

How old is your blog? Just 8 days old
Niche? Soccer news and analysis for the CONCACAF region (North America, Central America & Caribbean)
Pageviews per month? So far I have 2,700 pageviews in my first week
Monthly income? Have made $4 on adsense
Main income streams? Adsense only, still learning how to monetize site
How long before you made money? First day I put adsense made $1.34 ;D
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? On normal day 1-2, on match days 3-4
Turning point or special circumstance? Site brand new, so I’m still waiting for the turning point. Frankly, I though I would be getting about 3,000 pageviews in my first month, and was presently surprised that I almost got that number in my first week! Will continue writing good content and hope to create some followers.

Just wanted to come back and do quick update. After 9 months, my site is now averaging 40,000 pageviews per month, although I have spiked up to 100k/month during playoffs. Monthly Income is usually in the $200-300 range.

How old is your blog? 5 mo.
Niche? Money saving tips
Pageviews per month? On schedule for 4400 this month (been growing at 50%/mo)
Monthly income? Last month I “made” $15, though payout won’t be for three months at the current rate.
Main income streams? Adsense / Swagbucks
How long before you made money? 15 days or so before my first click.
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I put about 80 hours into my blog before taking it public. Since then, probably about 40-50 hours. I haven’t put much time into it in the past two months, but it still keeps growing on the initial 27 articles.
I’m really enjoying seeing how fast things are picking up! I just passed 100 views a day, and this is without updating facebook. I have found youtube videos to be extremely valuable for increasing traffic to my site.

Hey everyone! I just started a blog and am excited to see where it goes and hope to have success like you all have! My blog is balancingyourbody.blogspot.com. It’s about alkalizing your body and how to have optimal health and energy. This is something that has helped me out greatly and if anything I just want to spread the word! Good luck to all you bloggers out there and I hope we all can be successful with our endeavors 🙂

Oh, and I mentioned you on my blog, check it out! http://www.birdsandsoap.com/2012/05/ch-ch-ch-changes.html. Thanks for this site, your tips are invaluable. Super motivating as I’m trying to navigate my way through blogland with no experience. All of those conferences that bloggers I read keep talking about sound amazing (Blissdom, Haven, Snap…). I wish I had a million dollars, I would go to all of them and glean like crazy!

How old is your blog? 1 year, but I didn’t write anything for the last 6 months, I just got back at it.
Niche? hmmm…I write about things I’m passionate about. Which is geared toward building, DIYing, crafts, homeschooling, mom stuff.
Pageviews per month? It has increased from 1,000-8,000 over 6 months due to a single post of a bed I built that spread like wildfire on pinterest and on ana-white.com
Monthly income? $5.00 last month, so far this month, I’ve made $2. I didn’t even realize that I was making money because I hadn’t been blogging. It’s pocket change, but a welcome surprise.
Main income streams? I have adsense on my blog. Tell me more about monetizing please!
How long before you made money? 6 months.
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I’ve been killing it lately trying to find my way around html code stuff that I don’t understand (thanks for the tutorials, by the way. I now have a domain name registered and a button coming soon! also just figured out how to do a blog background and header designed on Microsoft Publisher. It was painful, but I go through it.). I’m trying to be disciplined and put in an hour or so a day to keep things steady.
Turning point or special circumstance? My picture that went crazy on Pinterest. I have a steady stream of views on that page (around 1000/month) while my other posts are reaching the low hundreds. I’m a big pinterester myself, so I’m focusing on creating well photographed content that can be repinned. The best free advertising I could think of!

How old is your blog? 2 months
Niche? Answering questions about breastfeeding and supporting nursing moms
Pageviews per month? 62 in my first month, 0 last month 🙁 Not sure how to “get out there”
Monthly income? 0
Main income streams? Working on affiliates and adsense
How long before you made money? N/A
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? ~2-4
Turning point or special circumstance? Still waiting for my turning point

How old is your blog? 3 months
Niche? Fashion
Pageviews per month? 1 125 average
Monthly income? $0
Main income streams? Not applicable
How long before you made money? Not applicable
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? one or two
Turning point or special circumstance? we have a few bloggers posting on the site which brings more viewers.

Hi,
Thank you so much for writing this post. I’m really hoping you can give me advice
about my blog and point me in the right direction.

How old is my blog? I started Bargain Hoot 2 years ago and have growth most months. It dipped a few times.
Niche? My blog is a combination of all different things that inspire me creatively….I enjoy finding ways to do things for less. I also enjoy cooking, crafting, decorating, fashion and event designing.
April visits: 56,789 reads 83,955 I’m not sure if page view means visits or reads.
Income: fluctuates on average between $50- $100 a month. A few months ago my Google checks dropped in half.
Only source of Income: Google
Blog related time 5-6 hours a day on the computer
I blog because most days I really love it. There have been times of discouragement and many times of joy! I’ve met some wonderful people and I appreciate my readers.
I have some physical challenges from time to time and would love to be able to have some income from my blog to offset the expenses. Plus, it would just be encouraging and a blessing.
I think I need someone to help me set up ads and figure out the best way for me to improve in that area. I’m not very computer savvy. I can find my way around enough to blog….but all the other stuff overwhelms me 🙂 Help …Amy 🙂

Hello,
I thought that my very small experience might me interesting to you, as I am starting to ask the same questions that you are. I am it great physical shape and I never go on fad diets, so my friends have always come to me for advice on how to get into shape. I am a nurse and in my 40’s doing pin up modeling on the side. This made me finally start the blog to help others get into shape. I started it last year and did nothing, so about one month ago I added AdSense, for advertizing and have made $5 on ads alone.
I thought it might be of interest because technically I am not an active blogger. I have just tinkered with it a little in the past month and have made a little something. My blog is
pinupgirlworkout.blogspot.com . In case you would like to see just how bare it is.
Ads are starting to make a believer out of me.

How long did it take before you started making money? Made my first $5 in Jan.

How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? Way too many! I try to do all of my blogging on my family’s off time, but ha ha on me!
I will be getting a nanny/helper soon, and running things out of an dedicated office soon!

What was your turning point? I am a endless barrel of information and someone out may want to read about it! Why not make a job out of it and have it treat you like a worker, and pay you!

Do you have a special circumstance? I have endless material and am a sahm, who loves to code and save money, anyways!

Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? I had a “field day with youtube” and watch google, wordpress, ad/marketing, and just peoples favorite blog videos non stop for a weekend. And of course, putting yourself as the reader helps!

Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule? Not really right now, and that’s my goal for this year. It is really original if your not into the general niche and want to learn, but in general there are tons of sites like mine. I would love to dive deeper into my desired topics, but there are not enough hours in the day, yet!

How old is your blog? 2 months
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Movies, Music, Fashion, etc
How many pageviews do you get a month? Last month 1,382 (this month 2,502 so far)
What is your monthly income? $2.50 (lol), haven’t focused on this really.
What is/are your main income stream/s? Ads, Affiliate Marketing, Shop
How long did it take before you started making money? N/A
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? Now, at least 8 or more, seven days a week.
What was your turning point? I mailed 25 press kits to contacts in fashion, retail, etc. and a few bloggers. I had a post blow-up on Reddit. I’ve been unable to repeat it and I felt it hurt my bounce rate and average page visit count. Not sure if it’s worth it? I’ve also had a big blog link to me a few times (worldofwonder.net) yay!! not sure if it brought much traffic though.
Do you have a special circumstance? I am not working other than my blog. I left my corporate job to “do me”. I’m prepared to eat cat food. lol.
Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? Press kit, telling my friends I would no longer speak to them if they didn’t tell everyone they knew about my blog. ;). When I started blogging 8+ hours a day, 5-10 posts a day.
Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule? I think just my voice. I hope I can entertain people, give them a laugh. Also I write about high brow and low brow, culture, but all with humor. So I think it’s rare to see a blog on such things as Comme des Garcons, Jeff Koons, and a silly little show on MTV. At least I hope.

How old is your blog?
3.5 years
Niche?
currently lifestyle {faith, family, and homeschool}
Pageviews per month?
currently 28540 {avg of last 3 months}
Monthly income?
It’s hard to say {see below} – I’m going to guess I’m probably in the $100/month range for “blogging” income. This is something I’m working on tracking better.
Main income streams?
Affiliate sales {e-books, products, Amazon}
How long before you made money?
It was probably close to a year {or longer} before I made any money – though I didn’t monetize right away. I don’t separate my blogging income from other $$ I make online, so it’s hard to say.
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
2-3 hours, 4 days a week
Turning point or special circumstance?
Last month I wrote a post that spread like wildfire on Pinterest {and I’ve yet to be able to duplicate the results}, and it lead to big sales via Amazon Associates. // My main work-from-home income is via my virtual assistance and consulting that is a result of having taught myself the world of blogging and social media over the past 3.5 years.

How old is your blog? 2 months
Niche? Real Estate Investing for young adults
Pageviews per month? 500 (thanks mom!)
Monthly income? $0
Main income streams? Nothing yet. Maybe an ebook or coaching sometime.
How long before you made money? N/A
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1-2
Turning point or special circumstance? Not much. Been flipping and buying property for years, and realize I was, by far, the youngest guy doing it. So I decided to make a blog to encourage young people to jump in too.

How old is your blog? 3 months
Niche? Humor, Entertainment, and Pop Culture
Pageviews per month? 2,000
Monthly income? $0
Main income streams? N/A
How long before you made money? N/A
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?2-3
Turning point or special circumstance?I currently have a wordpress.com blog, and I’ve been trying to convert it over to a wordpress.org, and ran into some problems, so I haven’t been able to add an adsense plug in. I just want to get better at promoting and maintaining my blog.

How old is your blog? – About a year and a half
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? – I think this is my problem – it’s whatever strikes my fancy that week, from my point of view as a writer of spirituality – I probably need a bit more focus.
How many pageviews do you get a month? – looks like I’m only averaging about 200 (any advice?)
What is your monthly income? – I have not tried to make any money yet, but found your blog because I was curious about it
What is/are your main income stream/s? – I’m a seminary professor and author
How long did it take before you started making money? – haven’t yet
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? – I post to the blog once a week, so it averages less than an hour a day
What was your turning point? – I think I may be coming to it now… (open to ideas!)

How old is your blog? 4 months
Niche? Veterinary- stories, advice, book/product reviews, etc.
Pageviews per month? 200-300
Monthly income? $0
Main income streams? $0- just signed up for google adsense, still trying to figure it out though.
How long before you made money? Haven’t made anything yet 🙁
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I try to do atleast 2 a day, but depending on my “real job” schedule, sometimes I can’t do any. However, on my days off I’ll be on WordPress, Facebook, and twitter on and off all day.
Turning point or special circumstance? The day I had 69 views in one day! And also having people i know in real life reading my blog and commenting on it in person really made me stick with it more so then any other blog I’ve tried to get off the ground.

Amy, thanks for the article! 🙂
The issue of earnings on their blogs is always actual for every blogger, including me. But after reading your post, I received some answers to my questions.
Thank you again. Good luck with your further blogging 🙂

I have started my blog about “spirituality” and after only 20 days I was getting 70 to 100 unique visitors daily and I applied for adsense and toame but as I ok a domain nadded domain to my blog it do not redirect to blog and so no person can see the blog and my adsense application was rejected due to same reason. Still trying to correct DNS settings. 🙁

How old is your blog? 3 years old next month
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? This is my personal creative writing blog
How many pageviews do you get a month? average 130
What is your monthly income? n/a
What is/are your main income stream/s? n/a
How long did it take before you started making money? n/a
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? I blog about once or twice per month, maybe 5 hours per week
What was your turning point? Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? I’ve been getting views under 200 per month until I changed my layout. Last month’s total was near 700
Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule? I’m not trying to make money and my blog offers nothing for the reader. Yet, I’ve gotten quite a few hits. This is why I’m considering creating a niche blog.

How old is your blog? 1 month
Niche? Depression
Pageviews per month? 4,150
Monthly income? Don’t know yet
Main income streams? Currently diversifying
How long before you made money? Want monthly income
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 6-7
Turning point or special circumstance? Young Entrepreneur Scholarship winner attendee Yanik’s Silver Underground Online Seminar 8

I like blogging but the amount of work I’ve put in is not what I expected. I love being able to share my story and opinions with the world.
I found that the quick get rich promoters are misleading people tremendously into the idea you can make thousands online being a Newbie blogger.
I agree with you about most successful bloggers have had experience blogging before becoming a success.
I’ve heard many say ads are a great way to make money but I disagree for new and those websites without the ability to attract huge audiences.
It takes hours of blogging or much money to create the content needed to sustain the amount of traffic that most high paying advertisers require.

My main focus is to help people with their depression.

But your posts is great but it does not answer my question …

What is your advice to new bloggers on how to avoid the lack of income in the initial process?

Ive been blogging for less than 1 month but some how I’ve managed to make 45 dollars through affiliate sales. My niche is weight loss/fitness. Does anyone know how to find out what your page rank is on google, I’m still new to this. Thanks

Hi Amy! Thx for all of your wonderful advice. I have been blogging for 3 years but have never tried to make money. Now that my kids are getting closer to school-age, which will give me more time to devote to blogging, I’m considering all the changes I should make before monetizing, such as moving to WordPress. But my question is, is there a “magic number” of page views that I should have before monetizing is even worth it? I average 1,300 pageviews a month now.

Hello
Thanks for your good information
I have started my website a few weeks ago I would be glad if anyone suggest me what it is good to do for my website.
Of course I have adsence right now and I am just posting 😀
But I have a question google analytic counts my own visits how could I ignore that?

Hi Amy,
Thanks for this helpful post. I’m quite new in blogging world and I was trying to learn more about SEO optimization etc. When I read your post I realized that I was doing something quite right and something quite wrong! So instead of resolving some questions in my mind, your post left me with more questions! 🙂 Let me explain by using your template:
How old is your blog? 2 months
Niche? Sewing, Style, Fashion – it’s “sewing your style…”
Pageviews per month? 11,928 pageviews for last month according to Google Analytics Data
100 – 150 visitors daily
Monthly income? 2,5 USD so far 🙂 (adsense)
Main income streams? –
How long before you made money? I was accepted to adsense program 10 days ago
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? App. 4 hours. I love every minute of it!
Turning point or special circumstance? My blog is bilingual. I launched it first in Turkish, then I launched the English version last month. Obviously it increased my traffic a little! I also opened a sub-blog where I put fashion photos for inspirational purposes and almost no text 3 days ago. Ironically, it created even more traffic than my English sewing blog where I put the most effort in!

So, dear Amy, I understand that my young blog’s traffic isn’t that bad. But whatever I do,
1. I cannot increase the daily traffic over 150 regularly.
2. I can’t get enough comments or feedback for my posts
3. My adsense income seems pathetic compared to many other webpages, even compared with the ones having similar traffic 🙂

Do you have an idea on how I can resolve these questions that came up after I read your post? 🙂
thanks in advance!
have a superb day 🙂

Your blog is brand new (2 months) so I wouldn’t worry about much more than creating great content and doing your best to connect with others. I went for months and months with no visible increase in pageviews, so don’t feel bad. As long as you’ve got content others enjoy, you’re likely to see growth eventually. Just keep at it. 🙂

My daughter pointed me toward your site several months ago. Your site content is interesting, informative, and inspiring. The replies on this topic are very helpful and polite. My wife and I are retired and although generating an income would be helpful, it is not requisite. I am persuaded blogging will be worth the effort. Thanks.

Hey thanks for read. I’m not going to participate in the survey since I’m brand new to the adsense game and the blogging game at that. I just like the fact that you brought me back down off of cloud9 since I had these wild fantasies of making a living off of adsense alone.

I know there are people who do make a full-time income with AdSense but I think most use it as just one of their income streams. I recommend a lot of income streams for sure. Better not to put all your eggs in one basket. 🙂 (My income streams are listed on my Tools page.)

i just started this blog about tablets and smartphones,it has only 3 posts i wrote in a half hearted effort but i promise myself i’ll start giving more time and effort to it from now.how many post should i have before i put ads on my blog and start spreading it around?could anyone of u look at my blog and tell me how to get rid of the boredom its oozing with right now?

Turning point or special circumstance? Pintrest is generating more views for me. I hope to find more time in the coming year to post more regularly and to think about generating money from my blog. For now it’s just a passion and hobby.

How long before you made money?
~ I started my blog as a way to preserve family memories, and also as a ministry of encouragement to other women. I just recently learned that bloggers can make an income, and I decided to try to monetize my blog to help out my husband with some bills we have. Since actively trying to increase traffic and make money in late January, I have doubled my pageviews per month. However, my number of comments have strangely declined. I am trying to find sources of income that fit my personal standards. Any product or service I endorse would have to be family friendly!

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
~ Probably 2 to 4? I am very busy living the life I am blogging about, but I try to get up early and I squeeze blogging into the nooks and crannies of my day.

Turning point or special circumstance?
~ January of this year when I made it one of my goals for the year to learn how to make money from my blog, and began to actively work towards that goal. Blogging is perfect for me because I love writing and I only want to earn money from home. I paid for a one hour consultation from Wise Woman Consulting, which was invaluable. We both blog in the same niche, and she is Very Successful (in my view), earning about $3000 per month from blogging. Here is the link: http://www.wiseconsultings.com/p/affiliate-marketing.html

~ I still hope to find ways to get more exposure within my niche and to greatly increase my traffic and profitability within the next year, but don’t want to try to force it. I am trusting God to bring readers to my blog and to bless my efforts as He sees fit.

Niche?
Technology. I’m trying to make it into a big tech news site with it’s own magazine.

Pageviews per month?
At this time Google says it’s 7,631 with 6,311 Unique Visitors. But my on site stat (Jetpack) says 9,237 views. I think Google’s system is more screwy since it doesn’t tell me what the person is searching for but JetPack tells me. BTW IDK if this is high or low.

Monthly income?
Since I started the site I made $9.90 from info links, $7.28 from Amazon, $1.59 from adbrite, $0 from linkshare. I had adsense but that was revoke.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
Honestly I have no idea. I think about 14 hours a day when I’m off work. Some days I don’t touch the site for a day or 2.

Turning point or special circumstance?
I had 2 or 3 volunteers that thought they wanted to write for the site but they flaked out. Some of them didn’t even start writing before they flaked out. But, I assume when the site starts making some real money and I can hire freelancers and they wont flake out.

BTW I was wondering if you can tell me if it’s normal for a site to have a total of 20,290 (Google) or 30,853 (Jetpack) visits since Nov 10 and have the lack of income and comments. This was my first news/blog so this entire experience is new to me.

Also, I was wondering if you think it would be possible for me to make a business out of this site. What I want to do is make this site into a big tech news site that has it’s own magazine and web cast. I want to hire some 5 or so freelancers to write 15 tech news articles a week. (I’m going to do that after the house is sold and I know for a fact I wont be financially screwed over) I hope within 3 to 5 months after I hire the freelancers I can rent out a business area and start building a full time team starting with a writer that can do graphic designing for a magazine. At which time I will have the writers put some of their best articles in a PDF format and I will send it out to a company that will both print the magazines and ship them.
Also, I want to start a web news show like IGN gaming news. I already talked to 3 models that said they will do it but we hadn’t talked about money since I’m not ready to do this yet. (Which means I hope they will be ready when I am) I plan to make an ad spot in the web news but IDK how much I will charge.
From there I hope to make a pod cast (both video and audio). I will have a mixture of a female and male host (not me). I will charge ad spots for the audio and I will charge a different ad spots for video.

Recently came across your blog when I was looking for some how-tos pertaining to Pinterest. Extremely informative blog.

How old is your blog? A day old (just started)
Niche? Targeted towards prospective MBA students for some of the top MBA programs
Pageviews per month? Too early to say (will update after a month)
Monthly income? Too early to say
Main income streams? Too early to say (I would likely keep the blog portion free of advertising and generate income by providing services, this is the thought at the moment)
How long before you made money? N/A
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I expect to blog for 4+ hours a day
Turning point or special circumstance? N/A

Monthly income? $1500- $3500 per month, depending on seasons (higher a few months after christmas time) *note – coupon deal bloggers don’t like to talk about how much we make generally, in fact I think many bloggers that feel like they are making great income don’t like to talk about it much.

Main income streams? Amazon, Coupons.com, google adsense, affiliates

How long before you made money? took a good 6 months to make a measly $100. DIdnt start it to earn money though so I just figured it out after 5 months and the money has slowly increased month after month

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 6-8 – sometimes more for coupon matchups or wondering through the stores as well.

Turning point or special circumstance?
Not really, my blog just has been very slowly growing for these last 3 years. Its sometimes hard to feel like you are big even when you are big – because its so easy to compare yourself with others. I remember thinking when I first started that if I ever got to 4,000 subscribers I would feel like I have “made it” – and now that I got there and passed it by I still feel like I am small when I look at the giants in this industry. Funny how that is…I really should feel like I have made it all the time!

So glad to hear that your coupon blog is doing so well! I’m just starting a coupon blog for the northern Indiana/southern Michigan area. Even though it is a well-saturated niche, I am hoping to be successful (with a lot of hard work) in my local area. If people knew how much time and energy it takes to set up and run a successful blog on a daily basis they would not (or should not) balk at how much some bloggers earn!

How old is your blog? Started as a website 17 years ago but has been a blog for about 3 years.

Niche? Food and Recipes

Pageviews per month? 75-100,000

Monthly income? $800 – $2000

Main income streams?

1. Multiple ad networks and learning how to manage them. My income doubled when I got serious and found ad networks to fill ad space when my first network’s fill was gone. Also in signing up with networks that don’t have to be the only one above the fold. I have three there and others that pay less below the fold.

2. Affiliate sales for web hosting.

3. Resource for sponsored ads – I get paid approximately $300 by one network to write a sponsored post and have relationships with a select number of brands that pay a similar amount. This is not as lucrative as it could be because I don’t want to use my blog as a space for constant sponsored posts.

4. Local events – I’ve been paid $500 to find a location and invite peers to a local dinner; $350 to host tweetups where attendees chat about the brand that I’m hosting an event for and varying amounts for other forms of local promotion. I get invited to a fair number of local events and though not paid per se I enjoy being feted by restaurants to try tasting menus and last year covered the Snowmass Culinary Festival for the Snowmass Tourism Board.

5. Not included in that figure above is the real benefit I’ve seen which is that the food blogging community utilizes my web services and contributes to about 75% of my monthly professional income stream.

How long before you made money? I didn’t even think about making money until about a year ago; it was because my traffic started to grow that I thought I should look into ad revenue.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 4 minimum which includes cooking and photographing for 2 posts per week.

Turning point or special circumstance?

1. Like many food sites I was looking for a large audience and forgot local. That was a mistake. Local opportunities have been great once I started including the name of my city and state in pertinent meta information and getting listed on Google high enough that local magazines and restaurants can find me.

2. Huge turning point that I didn’t plan but has seen my traffic explode? When I started featuring a cocktail on my blog every week. Not that I want everyone here to start doing that. 🙂

3. I started a blog mostly to learn how to build blogs for my professional web business. Food was a given since I had started a recipe website in 1995. I named it vinolucistyle.com as a companion of sorts to my online gift business at vinoluci.com. I decided to change my entire brand identity in 2010 and re-launched my brand as Creative Culinary the middle of last year. Having the name of my blog more clearly represent the content was a very good move.

I will reiterate what I’ve seen above and say this has been hard work. Creating traffic and readers does not happen overnight. I interact all day on Twitter, have an online blogging group I’ve formed and put a lot of time into each post. I am just starting to see the fruits of these labors result in just barely enough revenue to make it worthwhile. When people ask me about how I did it my most important response to them is, ‘Do what you love.’ Without that, this would simply not be worth it. Not at all.

Amy, I am conisdering starting a blog. I appreciate all the information your site provides. Do you know when making money on a blog is a little perk, and when you need to obtain a business license? Thanks!

update on site, after 85 days up and running it lingers close to the top 1.5 million sites. i am trying to get the rank to go faster legitimately, and tips, that I may not know. keep in mind i have quite a good knowledge of SEO

I was looking for a way to make money online, but I need a way to make money almost immediately. I’m looking for web work because I have been job hunting, but no one seems to want to hire me, even for basic jobs! Can you think of other ways of making money online that doesn’t require selling physical goods?

I understand the need to make money quickly. Unfortunately, unless you can find a job someone is paying for, it’ll takes a while to ramp up the income. You might check out my post about writing and I have a few ideas here too.

The responses are not a good representative sampling of the blogoshpere.
Seasoned, established i.e., financially sustaining bloggers are unlikely to be on this site looking inspiration, tips, or ten reasons why not to blog — they’re already doing it quite well, thank you. You can, however, take several lessons from the responses:
A. The blogoshpere is crowded with Me-toos so differentiation is important. Be either truly unique or substantially better than your competition.
B. Expect to work at it diligently for at least two years before you can attract the pageviews required for income of any kind.
C. Research the blogoshphere to learn what is already being done and what their numbers are; try to glean meaningful do’s and dont’s from the data.
D. Blogging like any infotainment is sensitive to the vicissitudes of of life: the economy, trends, politics, technology. You will need to change with the times or your blog will die a slow, lingering death

“The responses are not a good representative sampling of the blogoshpere.” Yes, you are absolutely right. This post was meant more for the person just starting a blog, wondering if others like them were really seeing results. As for your other points…

A. Yes, I couldn’t agree more.
B. I’ve gotta disagree here. I wouldn’t expect to make a whole lot before a year, but I know from experience (and from the experience of others) that generating some income can most definitely occur before 2 years.
C. Agreed.
D. Agreed again.

Monthly income? None, Focusing on content and getting a good reader base first. Then I will slowly monetize my blog.

Main income streams? None

How long before you made money? Have not made money yet

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 3 -5 hours a day which includes actual writing, editing, researching, and promotion. I have been known to work over 5 hours on the blog a day. When I am hott I like to pre-write content that way if I get writers block I don’t have to worry because I already have stuff waiting to be posted.

How old is your blog? 2 year and 3 months
Niche? DIY, construction, home design
Pageviews per month? 25,000
Monthly income? none
Main income streams? none
How long before you made money? n/a
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1-2 hours
Turning point or special circumstance? Had some of my work featured on a huge design website.

Honestly I figured that my traffic is miniscule and it wasn’t worth trying to put ads on it. Am I wrong about this? I’ve been blogging for almost 7 years and never tried to make money. I get irritated with blogs that have tons of ads because they take forever to load on my laptop. I must be the only one who feels this way!?

How old is your blog? Three months
Niche? Music
Pageviews per month? 1,800
Monthly income? $10
Main income streams? Adsense
How long before you made money? First month (about a dollar..)
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? About four-five
Turning point or special circumstance? Someday!

How old is your blog? 6 months
Niche? Photography and photos
Pageviews per month? 500,000+
Monthly income? 400-800(Google adsense)
Main income streams?
How long before you made money? 3 months
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 0-8 average around 3-4
Turning point or special circumstance?

How old is your blog? 1 year and 3 months
Niche? Yes, heavily focused a certain kind of software and related business practices
Pageviews per month? 3500
Monthly income? n/a
Main income streams? n/a
How long before you made money? n/a
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1 hour
Turning point or special circumstance? Spending time on some basic SEO helped me. Also, writing a few special posts helped. I blog not generate income. Instead, I wanted three things out of this: – creative outlet; – ability to build my own brand within my customer base and my company; – support the business practices that I work on

I just sold my blog. I had it for about 9 months, and it was making around $1000 a month. However, my new blog is not even a month old and I’m just trying to lay the groundwork out so no income yet (other than my tip jar!). I have a lot of great post ideas, I just have to get them UP. I have been guest posting to create backlinks. The niche of my blog is kind of like yours, I post blogging (and social networking) tips. I have quite a few posts created but it seems like most of the things I come up with have been written about already, I just word things a bit differently I guess so it’s okay. I just hope I never run out of ideas!

I have been blogging for about 8 months. I make over $1000 a month but I put in a minimum of 8 hours a day….. I started making money from my blog within the first week because I already had a fan base before I put it up.

Turning point or special circumstance? Began blogging to focus on writing and give myself a creative outlet. Ultimately it will need to either bring in money or provide opportunities for me to create an income from writing. I work 4 days a week in an unrelated field. On wordpress.com you can’t run ads and I was thinking of moving to wordpress.org but given I have no technical knowledge I’ve decided to put my time and effort in creating good writing on the .com site at least for the next 12 months. There is also a lot of opportunities on .com to build your readership with other sites that has given me quiet a few subscribers. I don’t think my income will come from ads anyway and there seems to be a lot of bloggers out there struggling with the ads/sponsored posts who put an enormous amount of time in – I do wonder if they are getting the financial rewards that should go with that amount of time. To date I have acquired 83 blog followers, 40 facebook followers and 98 twitter followers. I visit other bloggers and try to leave relevant comments, and I’ve signed up for a few challenges here and there which sometimes get new people visiting my blog. Thank you Amy for sharing your details, it is very helpful for newcomers who have no idea what we should be achieving to be considered “successful.”

How old is your blog?
2 months
Niche?
No niche at this point but from my writing a lot of it is career focused and personal finance with its own twist
Pageviews per month?
200-300 but I just swtiched from tumblr to a self hosted wordpress which I think will help me in the long run because its a lot better with SEO
Monthly income?
$0
Main income streams?
How long before you made money?
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
Maybe 1 or 2 hours a day most of my articles are short and to the point
Turning point or special circumstance?

I think its cool to see what the actual figures are for people who are blogging. I started blogging just to get my name out there but also to get better at writing. I think once the traffice and the mailing list is there it will be relatively easy to monetize the blog. There are a lot of different ways to monetize the blog other than typical adverting such as affiliates but also your own informational products. The margin on these things are incredible. But as you can see you obviously shouldn’t do this if money is going to be the only motivation. Like I said I started mine to network and get my name out there but to also get better at writing. Writing is such an important skill and ok yea if I can make some pocket change off of the blog that would be great too.

Main income streams? Infolinks (but just switched to Intentclicks) Amazon, Affiliates, and I just added google adsense

How long before you made money? I started making money last month but not much. But this month I wanted to step it up since I had purchased blog advertising and my blog has been mentioned on some high PR sites. I went from pennies a day to up to $10 a day. Not much but my blog is growing steadily.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Depends. Updating my blog right now through out the day could be a few hours since I research online deals and other deals, then I also take a few hours to read on SEO and comment on dofollow blogs.

Turning point or special circumstance? I already knew a lot about affiliate marketing and blogging for income since I’ve had an interest in it for a while.. I just had nothing that I was passionate about to keep a blog going until now.

I don’t think you get it. Most of these people are working another job along with this.

And it’s a “trend”? How long do trends last? Blogging has been around for a long time, yet people have always found a way to make money from it. Sure, it is just now getting a lot of attention, but that is because people have just now realized what was going on over the internet.

And even if it was just a trend, why not make some money while you can? My blog is just now starting to make money, and I haven’t spent more than $5.00 on it. Creating a blog is free on Blogger, and with people like Amy here giving us free advice, why not give it a try? Who knows? You could be the next billion dollar blogger!

Hello everyone, I also am very curious how others are doing with their blogs and think collating this info is a great idea,. So, I’ll throw my stats in the ring…

How old is your blog? – 5 and a half months
Niche? – retro/vintage
Pageviews per month? – according to blogger stats, 16,000/ according to analytics, 13,000
Monthly income- Not much for the effort! around $20 to $25. I’m not sure i know what I’m doing.
Main income streams? – Adsense and a (very) little Amazon
How long before you made money? – first month, around $4.00
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 2 to 3 hours a day
Turning point or special circumstance? I’d been wrriting articles for a content farm for about a year and decided to branch out on my own. Networking? None really. I rely solely on search engine traffic.

Niche? Coupons, Freebies, frugal tips etc (Note* to many bloggers in the game)

Pageviews per month? 5,028 Nov 2011

Monthly income? $25-50

Main income streams? Affiliates

How long before you made money? 1st month – 26.88 (and I am still around that mark)
(family I suspect my numbers per click on ads are very low)
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 6-8hrs

Turning point or special circumstance? Wanting to share savings, Did not know I could make real money until a started blogging. Then I threw myself in head first!
And being well known by other big time bloggers is key! Networking! I am still working on that! It feels like high school all over again! LOL But in time you will get “known” by others!

How old is your blog? 11 months
Niche? Enjoying Life, hobbies, games, ideas, physical/mental/spiritual suggestions to enjoy life more.
Pageviews per month? 850 – 1000
Monthly income? $35
Main income streams? Adsense, affiliates
How long before you made money? Wouldn’t classify my blog as having made any real money yet.
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Approx 4 hours
Turning point or special circumstance? Still waiting 🙂

How old is your blog? 2 years
Niche? life, recipes, photography, etc…
Pageviews per month? ~500
Monthly income? $0
Main income streams? none
How long before you made money?
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I am not currently blogging daily…
Turning point or special circumstance? I enjoy blogging, but something it feels like i’m blogging to myself and that no one reads it! ha. Recently we’ve been really tight on money (I may have to find a job, but i’m not sure yet) and I never thought of making an income on my blog until I found this sight. I guess I need to first start blogging daily! Sometimes I just don’t know what to blog about though…

I have have my blog for around 1 year, around 400 view a month the one I am working on now it about online survey sites http://paidsurvey100.blogspot.com, then I am moving on to other ways to make money at home or on line. I only have adsense right now on it and just hit 100.00 dollars. I just sent in some app’s today for Affiliate marketing I hope they except my site. If anyone has some other tips please share I would love to be making the money some of you are making blogging I could really use it right now. 🙂

Hi Amy. I am curious about just one thing. Looks like the per hour “pay” from a blog can be pretty low. So I guess we all need “Tell your time” right? I did the calculations for some of the bloggers who left their info and some are getting paid only about $3 per hour. One is about $10.40. I assume in reality that she is worth more than that. So I am wondering about everyone’s thoughts on this. If we are trying to support our family’s income w/ blogging, maybe it’s not a good answer? Or maybe it just is if we’d be sharing this info anyway. I am not sure what to think about this. (And I sure hope I am not coming across as a total “downer” – I just think it is important that we look at this realistically.

I am very happy blogging, but it does take an incredible amount of time. Anyway, in the interest of saving time…onto my stats.

I’ve been blogging 11 months.
Niche: Whole Food, Healthy Living, Special Diets, Frugality (I am thinking I may need to tighten this up as I also write about autism and faith)

Page views – about 78,000

Income – not sure. Maybe about $300 / month

Main income: Ads (I want to change this to affiliates and my own products)

Hours blogging – not sure. Getting to be fewer though as I ditch perfectionism

How long did it take? About 4 months maybe. I had no idea what I was doing.

Turning point? Finally doing something I was afraid to do and again, ditching perfectionism. I thought blogs w/ ads looked horrible. I still don’t like them and I’d like to tweak them to be ads that I really like now that I have page views to go and get sponsors who match my niche more, but I just thought I’d never have ads. Well, you have to get paid somehow. It is also so hard to try new things sometimes. For me now it is going to advertisers and also writing an e book. But it all takes time as well. I need to really watch prioritizing the blog over family, God and sleep.

I am a brand new blogger. And when I say new…I mean “today” old…lol. I noticed that most of you make money from “save money” blogging or couponing, which are very informational blogs right now in today’s market. I just wanted to comment that I am learning so much from all of you. Thank you for all your contribution of comments.

Frugal Jen… your site is awesome! Your comments are fabulous and I have much to learn!

Now the fact is Google Adsense pays what you deserve and other ad networks are scams or just too greedy including Chitika.I started an internet solutions tech blog that started earning $45 a day with Adsense after 3 months with 3000 – 3800 page views a day.For this same blog I tested Chitika Ads for one week and it was paying me 10 cents a day.Over 90% of the traffic is from the USA and about 99% search engine traffic.I removed the Chitika Ads and stuck with Adsense ever since.My income continues to grow sometimes hitting $70 a day.And I hardly update the site.I only have 7 articles including one indepth article that is 3000 words long.

On how much you can earn with a blog,it all depends on the niche,the amount of traffic you get ,the CTR and the Cost Per Click .These three factors vary across niches,and also if your content is well targeted and relevant to the reader,you will get Ads that are more relevant thus giving you a better CTR.There are other factors as well such as Ad placement and Ad size.

How old is your blog? – One month
Niche? – Tips on Hair Removal
Pageviews per month? – 100+
Monthly income? – $0 🙁
Main income streams?
How long before you made money?
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 4-5 hrs
Turning point or special circumstance?

How old is your blog? About 2weeks
Niche? Food news, facts, recipes ect
Pageviews per month? So far about 180 ;(

Monthly income? 0
Main income streams? I’m a chef by day
How long before you made money? N/A
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 6-8
Turning point or special circumstance? I’m hoping something will happen until then I will just put my heart in it

How old is your blog? Almost a month
Niche? Beauty/fashion
Pageviews per month? 800
Monthly income? 0
Main income streams? I have an office job
How long before you made money?
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 6-8
Turning point or special circumstance? None yet. But I’m very passionate about what I do & hoping one day it will be fruitful

What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? DIY, lots of tutorials

How many pageviews do you get a month? around 130,000

What is your monthly income? My best month was july of this year $315 between ads and affiliates

What is/are your main income stream/s? I earn most of my money from ads, (NOT amazon) pennies per month.

How long did it take before you started making money? It took me 4 months to get my first google check ($100) 3 months for the second, now it takes about 2 months to earn $100

How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? 10 hours! between the work I do for my blog content, and networking and writing posts etc.

What was your turning point? Do you have a special circumstance? Did something happen which was the point at which you started seeing steady growth? Is there something about your blog that makes it not exactly “average” and therefore makes it one of the exceptions to the rule?
I don’t think there was a particular turning point. My blog has grown steadily for two years, It takes a while, you gotta love what you’re doing, that’s for sure!

I think I must doing something wrong. There are smaller blogs that are making more money. I will have to really delve into your blog Amy to see what I can do to improve my income.

ps I’m hoping this goes through anonymously, but if not, I don’t really have anything to hide. Anyone who writes me would get the same answers.

Thanks so much for sharing your info. 130,000 pageviews a month is a good-sized audience so I would recommend you do some testing with monetization (placement of ads, types of ads, affiliate marketing, etc.). I think you can definitely pull your income up with some tweaking! 🙂

Amy,
I have tweaked, I’ve tried a lot of things. I can’t seem to let go of Google Adsense, but some days it is less than one dollar. I have a couple affiliates, but it’s like a roller coaster.
I currently use Rivit, (michaels ads are the best) Lijit (which was just bought by who you use, federated?) I also have amazon, but that never nets me anything.

I have been all over your blog trying to learn new things. Thanks for all the hard work. I, as a blogger, not that it’s a LOT of work.

I would love to chat with you..one of the areas i am good at is monetizing. My niche is easier than some to monetize but I still could probably help you- you are spending way too much time to be making $100 a month!! Please shoot me an email from my blog 🙂

Wow, this is great information. I am new to blogging but hope to make some extra money doing it. My blog is only a few days old and the niche is finances/ saving money so I am going around the web soaking up as much information as I can on how to make money from this. Thank you anonymous users for being brave enough to share your earnings. This really gives us newbies a lot of insight 🙂

Amy,
I am trying to find the best way to monetize my food/recipe blog and am hoping you can give me some tips or thoughts. Most my traffic comes from sites like TasteSpotting and Foodgawker.
.
According to Google I have had almost 20,000 page views this month which is kind of low because I was out a week or so for a funeral.

I have my ads through Foodbuzz and last month from their stats I had 7,608 impressions and made $15.22 from them. I receive 2.00 for every 1,000 cpm’s and they always have an ad there, so I don’t have to worry about empty ads, but I cannot have other sponsors or advertisers on my blog while I run them.

I can do reviews of products as long as I run it through them first for OK.
I am a stay at home mom and really would like to make an income with my blog but need help figuring out the most beneficial way to do it.

Thank you so much for your time and if anyone else would like to input, please do!!!

Well, I’m not very familiar with the foot niche, but if you’re able to get out of the contract, you might try other methods like Google AdSense, private ads and more affiliate sales (like ebooks, etc.).

Well I’m trying not to get too depressed:) My blog is about 1 1/2 months old and I only get about 10 pages a day:( Been networking, but boy it’s alot of work! I’ll keep it up though, I know those that have come to my blog really seem to enjoy it!

Turning point or special circumstance?
When I first started my site I really wasn’t thinking about monetizing it, but I soon realized that there were many people interested in saving money/couponing in my area. Soon after I realized this I contacted a lady who teaches coupon classes in the area and let her know about my site. She was very pleased and now promotes my site in all of her classes. She has been a big blessing! 🙂

Also, I want to thank you for your site! I don’t know if I could have ever got started if it hadn’t been for bloggingwithamy. I still get overwhelmed sometimes, but when this happens I just head on over to this site and I most always find a solution to my problem. 🙂

Wow, what a fascinating snapshot of people who monetize/are trying to monetize their blogs. My blog is about 4 years old. I’ve never tried to monetize it. I use it to encourage clients to hire me to stage their homes. I don’t want to appear spammy or too commercial, as building trust is very important in my industry. I’m working on starting another blog which I will feel more comfortable monetizing. I have another website (3 yrs old) having to do with building WordPress websites for a specific niche market and I make $200 or so per month as an affiliate for just one company. I’m planning on upping the number of companies I am an affiliate of. I’d be really happy to be making $2K or $3K more per month :o)
Thanks for the generous sharing of information and the place to do so, Amy!

How old is your blog? 4 yeas
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Craft, DIY, home decor
How many pageviews do you get a month? 350,000
What is your monthly income? $3500
What is/are your main income stream/s? ad network, affiliate marketing, selling personal ads, brand ambassadors, sponsored posts
How long did it take before you started making money? I blogged for fun for 2 years before I turned it into a business
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? 40

I started my blog about two weeks ago and your site has been so helpful. I think I have a really good niche (saving money for Christmas) and I’ve had about 700 page views since I started. I’m hoping to get things rolling-can anyone suggest affiliate companies or networks? I’m already using Amazon Associates. Thanks again!

Hello Amy very interesting post. I have not made any money on my blog. I started a year ago and just did it to release some creative energy. I presently get 100 hits a day and my topics range from Homesteading to farming, to my life in general. I have lots of positive comments some saying I should write a book or add ads to my blog. I have not done this as I was afraid to scare people away.
I now find I spend hours on my blog. I live in the country and internet access is very expensive. I was thinking of putting ads on my blog if only to pay for my expenses. What do you think? Is it worth the gamble. I now pay $80. a month for the internet. That is not even that great a service.
I am happy I found this article. Happy blogging. B

Amy, first let me say you were my tutorial from the birth of my blog. Your help has been invaluable. So here goes:

How old is your blog? 6 weeks
What is your niches? Frugal Living/Thrifty Lifestyle
Pageviews: According to Google Analytics, 9,109 in the 6 weeks
Income: I just hit $300
Main income stream: Affiliates, Google Adsense (although very little there)
How long before I made money: Day 1
Hours per day: on average 8 hrs
Turning Point: Looking forward to what a turning point will look like but I will say I approached the blog from day one as a job and a business.
Special Circumstances: I can’t think of any but I will say prior to my blog I had a good size social media community and whereas I honestly try to avoid spamming my personal fb friends with my blog posts (because there are many posts per day) there have been times when I have posted to fb thinking I had my fan page open and not my personal fb page. Some of the feedback was encouraging and some of that network has followed me over to the fan page of the blog.

I’m looking forward to launching my site on the 1st of September and I’m going about it as a job also. I’ve spent this last month (and so many years before it) researching (thanks, Amy, this blog is amazing!) and getting ready to go.

My niche is a bit different from yours but I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind doing a little networking with me (if it makes sense for our different goals)? One of the things I’m looking forward to most about blogging is meeting other bloggers and finding ways to support each other.

Would love to have you hang out ’round here. Of course, leaving comments on other blogs is good to, finding others in your niche, connecting on Facebook and/or Twitter…all that stuff is good stuff for networking. Let us know when you’re site is live!

I have a question. So basically I get about 3000 clicks a month and the blog is 2 and 1/2 months old. I have Google AdSense with quite relevant ads given my topic which is fashion. The thing is that literally almost no one clicks on the ads. 😀 I get the traffic but I don’t get any revenue at all. Basically 2$ up to now. I would appreciate some help.

AdSense works differently for everyone and its success depends on so many factors. I would suggest you move your ad blocks around, try different sizes, try images vs. text and vice versa, etc. It also depends on where your traffic is coming from, how many visitors make up those 3000 clicks and on and on. Don’t give up just yet! Traffic is the biggest thing when it comes to AdSense, so give yourself time to build up some traffic. In the meantime, experiment, experiment, experiment.

How old is your blog? 1 year
Niche? Recipes, Blogging tips
Pageviews per month? 982 pageviews.
Monthly income? $4
How long before you made money? I just started google adsense last February earning $0.52. and has slowly reach $4 a month.
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? At least 2-4 hours
Turning point or special circumstance? I have been blogging for a year but its just recently that I entertain the thought of making money from my blog. I watch a local TV show featuring bloggers making money through blogging. So I though I should give it a try. I’m taking it slowly and enjoying the learning process.

Hi, Nice thread.
My blog is one month old and am finally getting search engine traffic, but only a few pageviews per day. The hardest part has been setting up WordPress. So many plugins and then all the trouble getting things to work with my host. I feel more like a computer programmer than a blogger, but hopefully I will be able to focus on writing soon!

How old is your blog?
3 years old
Niche?
Food blogger. Recipes with step by step photos on how to make the recipes. Taking gourmet dinners and breaking it down to show everyone that anyone can cook!
Page views per month?
about 500 to 1000
Monthly income?
$0.00 – this is why I am here! I am so frustrated with this and I do not understand this.
Main income streams?
Foodieblog roll advertising ( I have tried google ad sense too and never made a whole dollar)
How long before you made money?
I still have not made any money
Hours blogging?
Every day I cook something for the blog photograph it and then edit photos for posts. Prob 20 hours per week
Turning point or special circumstance?
I just got laid off from my day job. I would like to make my blog my career since it is my passion and my love and something I would love to do. I am fine if it just paid the mortgage! But as of now I still cannot get the blog to make me even a whole dollar. I am at a loss. I have tried to increase traffic and I just do not know what I am doing wrong or who I can be like some of the other bloggers listed here. I admire their accomplishments and would like to get a steady income from my page but clearly I need HELP! Any advise would be great!

Your blog looks very nice and you are doing a great job with your photography.

First off, you need to get more eyes on your blog.. 500-1000 a month is not a lot and I can see why you are not making any money, it’s simply not enough traffic to really bring in anything.

You need to Start:
1.Commenting at popular food blogs, participate in the conversation, don’t just promote your blog
2.Pitch a popular food blog with a guest post/recipe
3.Do a giveaway and submit it to popular giveaway linkys (moneysavingmom.com is a good one, I have one, too on tues night)
4.buy an ad on a popular site- don’t pay too much, though
5.work on the seo of your site. when you are naming a recipe head over to the Google keyword tool and see how many searches are being made per month for that recipe, make sure it is an [Exact] search- not a broad (those numbers are deceiving). it may prompt you to change the recipe name to one that is being searched more.
6. Get a better subscribe box- what you have is not interesting enough for me to see and want to sign up
7. write a short ebook of recipes to give away when someone subscribes to your site, freebies=sign ups

Then you need to add other ways of making money. From what I have heard cooking blogs are kind of hard to monetize well, but not impossible.

1.Add Google adsense, to your posts, add it to your feed and email.
2.Start adding in amazon links to products in your recipes that cane be purchased there, even if people don’t buy them they may buy something else.
3. Book reviews/amazon links
4. Sign up for http://www.lijit.com/ – it is another ad network you can use, doesn’t pay a lot but is easy to get into and could make you a bit.

Understand that sidebars don’t convert well.. affiliate links and Google in posts do..I mostly reserve my sidebars for ads that pay me no matter if my readers interact with them or not.

The most important part for you might be to start submitting your photos on Food Gawker, if you’re not doing it already. That will really help get you tons more traffic and people will start clicking on those ads. 🙂

How long before you made money? First month I think I racked up about $5.00 😉

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 10-14+ hrs. I had to ask another local gal to help me with the postings and deal finding. We do local coupons swaps, coupon classes, donate food to the local food bank and collect and send expired coupons to military bases overseas all for free – besides blogging. We offer the free advertising to local business as long as they offer a special deal for our fans.

Turning point or special circumstance? We are expecting a HUGE turning point starting sometime in Sept with our local paper. They have asked to join forces with us because of all the community work we are doing and supporting local businesses. Our Facebook page has grown via word of mouth and freebie giveaways from 0 to nearing 1800 in 4 months. I’m a stay at home mom and am passionate about teaching others how to help themselves AND help others at the same time.

My blog is Three and half years old.
My niche I would say parenting. I really just started it as a way to keep my family updated.
I was getting a bit discouraged and I wrote a post called Shew super mom don’t bother me. I went from 6,000 page views total in 3.5 years to over 3000 in the past month. Just this past Sunday I had 500 pageviews and I have no clue why! I went from 20 followers to 30 and I have a whooping 10 followers on facebook. Yes I am high rolling! lol
My friend Jenae wrote a post about how her blog became succesful and she commented go ahead and put up adds even if you are only make 0.02 a day. So a put a couple of adds up and expected to hopefully make a dollar eventually. I have made 46 dollars in the past 3 weeks. I really don’t know why people read my blog. I don’t think I am a great writer and I take awful pictures. However, now I am excited about being part of the blog world and would like to be more active.

I have noticed the posts I make fun of myself are a hit, but I can’t make fun of myself all the time. I want to be genuine and I can’t fake it; therefore those posts will only come when I do something worthy of humiliating myself. ; )
So I am reading your blog fervently to try to figure out how to make this blog thing work.

Amy,
This is an awesome post, along with the others about how to build your blog! I’ve had my blog for probably 2 years and am technically in the hole… Spent more on domain and hosting than I’ve made. I do love my blog though, I think I may just be too broad. I’m trying to narrow down my categories into just 4.
Thanks!
Kendra

I just wanted to say, that I am sooooo appreciative of this post and all that responded. This really helped me. I am hopeful that I will make money someday. I wish I had the money now, but I am ok with waiting…I just hope that by the time my 3 year old is in kindergarten, my blog can pay for his tuition. Thanks!!!!

Hi Amy – First of all, thank you for blogging about all this stuff. I just started my blog last week and am averaging about 200 views a day now. I’d love to monetize what I’m doing, but I have no idea where to start. As of right now, I have about 100 posts in the can (they’re very short) and plan to slow down to one a day or so after the first 100 are published. I love what I’m doing as it’s extremely personal to me as a new dad, so I will continue to do it for free, but I would love any tips or suggestions you might have. Thanks again! You are awesome.

Wow, 100 posts! Sounds like you’re off to a great start. Have you thought about monetizing with Google AdSense? For many niches, that’s a good (and easy) place to start. I talk a bit about it in this post.

How old is your blog? 2 1/2 month
Niche? education/reviews/great deals
Pageviews per month? 2500
Monthly income? sponsored blog posts: $50, Sponsored Tweets $6, AdSense $6, Coupons.com $0, Spark people $0, AmazonAssociates $0.00, Groupon $30 referral $
Main income streams? See above
How long before you made money? kinda still waiting
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 3+
Turning point or special circumstance? Still working on building a following and trying to figure what else I need to be doing. Your blog has been VERY helpful!

How old is your blog? Just under 3 months
Niche? Cosmetic Surgery
Pageviews per month? last month only about 4100
Monthly income? nil
Main income streams? My day job!!!
How long before you made money? Haven’t tried to make money yet!
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1-2 hours
Turning point or special circumstance? I’m waiting for this!
I’d love to make money from my blog, but I haven’t monetized it yet. I’m very patient re this because I just enjoy blogging
I read a lot by other bloggers who always say “content is king”. Is it possible for me to just rely on my original content to find its way to readers? Or should I network with other bloggers etc.
In my industry, companies are very willing to pay for advertising, so I’m hoping in the distant future my blogging love will pay off.

How old is your blog? 2 years
Niche? Couponing, Savings
Pageviews per month? 6,000
Monthly income? 110
Main income streams? Coupon affiliates / my e-book sales
How long before you made money? 1 year
Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1 (Facebook mostly)
Turning point or special circumstance? I just decided to monetize my couponing website. I started the site then wrote 3 couponing e-books basically to answer friends questions on how to save money with coupons . I started selling those and thought this is pretty easy , let me add some relevant AND monetized links and sell the books from the website too . That’s the key , your ads or sales should be relate closely to your niche. When people print coupons from my site for example, they don’t think they are making me money. I could make more but I am the editor for another website and a mommy, simply don’t have the time . But it is nice to earn a little income from something I like

Turning Point? I was having such a blast couponing and just had to tell everyone, so I got serious about my blog and used it to help my friends and local community learn how to coupon so they can experience the satisfaction of saving money!. I started to realize that it was completely possible to make money with my blog if I stuck it out and not give up in 6 months!

Turning point or special circumstance? Simply Bon Vivant is actually my wife's site. She handles all the content, while I am more behind the scenes with layout, optimization and monetizing. No major turning point yet, but seeing weekly increases in traffic. Really trying hard to get visitors to comment which is seeming to be a harder task then I thought. Also trying to focus on building strong relationships with fellow bloggers and following good advice like what's found here.

I;m really frustrated with my blogs progress. I have a full time job and can’t devote more time to it, but I’d love to be able to make a full time income.

How old is your blog? 8 months
What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Nutrition
How many pageviews do you get a month? 1,282 this last month
What is your monthly income? In 8 months i made $35, this month i made $9 but it was about $11 for the previous two months
What is/are your main income stream/s? adsense
How long did it take before you started making money? 6 months
How many hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? 2

This is a great post, my new blog stats are almost identical to yours but like you that comes off the back of 4.5yrs of blogging. I haven’t monetised yet but am currently building some strategies for that. Thanks so much for sharing this!

Thank you for sharing the information. I am extremely interested in building a blog. Did not think so much about the income, but am passionate about my life and sharing what I have learned with others. Could you please direct me to places where I could learn how to use the income streams the above people are referring to: “affiliates, Ad Network, Private ad sales, brand ambassadorships, sponsored content, sponsored giveaways” Thanks so much for your help!

Turning point or special circumstance? i started the blog for fun, because I love the topic. finally deciding that the blog was a business and looking at it like a job changed how I approached blogging. although, I would do what I am doing for free…I enjoy it that much…but, I just wouldn’t be able to post as often. i absolutely love the blog/the people/the niche/it’s really a dream job for me right now.

I’ve been blogging for 15 months and had no interest in earning money through my blog till recently. I have become an affiliate for several (select) companies and am working with 2 others on becoming their first affiliate! I am excited about this transition and look forward to making money doing something I enjoy. Thanks for these very helpful posts!

My blog is about about two weeks old, so basically a newborn in blogging years. I plan on making one or two more blogs, but my current one,http://www.chairreport.com , focuses on reviewing chairs (hence the name). Google Analytics hasn’t fully recognized my blog yet, so I can’t say for page views per month, I would assume less than 10 if even that. I have made $0.00, but my plan is to build my blog up and then try sign up with affiliate websites once it’s at least decently ranked in search engines. Eventually, my main income stream will be through being an affiliate. I’m assuming it will be at least 6 months until I make any decent amount of money, possibly shorter. Like many people reading this post, I’m in a pretty insecure place, hoping things will work out. I’m a full time student, so I really only have time to work on my blog about two hours or so per day. My special circumstance is that I’m 17, so I’m young enough to have grown up with the internet and computers, meaning I have very few issues with the technical stuff, and have actually found “work-arounds” because of it.

Any recommendations from anyone who has been where I am, or has quickly checked out my site? So far I only have one review, but my review is pretty original. Humble beginnings is where I’m at. Thanks to anyone who may or may not quickly help me out!

Hi Amy, I love your website. I have been a stay at home mom for almost 5 years now and always been looking for ways to make money online while at home. I learned about blogging for profit about 2 years ago but no one really guide me into it so I didn’t know what to do. I tried it for 3 months and give up. I wish your blog was up when I started at that time. I am back to blogging now and hopefully will be successful at this time. Thank you for tips!!!! I don’t make money yet but I believe it will be in 2 years time.

Thank you so much, Amy, for this post. It is extremely helpful. I have been wondering and wondering about this!!
I dove into a blog on a whim, knowing nothing about blogging, but excited about my idea and confident it could work. Three months later and I’m still confident it could work, but not confident that I’m the one to work it. I am so overwhelmed with the technical stuff. I have a clear idea of what I would want it to look like, what I would post, how many hours a day, income goals….. but the mountain of learning (i.e. the 50 billion pages of info here on your blog!) to get there seems insurmountable. I’ve considered cheating and paying someone to help me get set up in WP… but I don’t want to shell out money if I decide not to keep with it. Lots of praying about it, reevaluating everything, learning to “tell my time” ;-), and I’m still not sure. Part of it is that I shy away from risks, and I work best when there is a direct relationship between hours and income. Clearly incompatible with blogging for money. On the other hand, I am passionate about my subject, I always have people asking me how I do what I do, and I want to be a part of this fabulous blogging community. I feel like I’m missing out!
Thank you for all you do. Thanks for “Tell Your Time”–I’m spreading the word. That was fabulous, convicting, reinvigorating. In just a couple of days I feel so much more in control of my days (in a I’m-not-really-in-control-of-anything-because-God-is-sovereign sort of way), and I really needed that.
I look forward to worshiping the risen Lord together with you in glory if we never meet before then. : )

I think the feelings you describe about blogging are common to all of us! I know I have certainly felt the same way. Remember, slow and steady wins the race…and it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s definitely one of those things that you’ve gotta put a fair amount of time and energy into at the beginning and don’t see reap the rewards for a while sometimes. I’d encourage you to take one step at a time and maybe devote just an hour a day to it (or however much your schedule allows). Set the timer and get what you can get done in that time. I know for me, I often get overwhelmed if I try to tackle too much in one sitting and then I just feel discouraged and deflated. Make a list of the top three to five things you want to be sure to do each day (I think creating great content and networking with other bloggers should definitely be on that list) and then fit in the rest where you can. Don’t feel like you have to do all the technical stuff I write about. There are lots of us who don’t do it all. My goodness, there’s plenty of stuff here, that I wrote myself, that is still on to-do list and not on my got-done list! So, be encouraged. 🙂

I just stumbled on your blog and I am very impressed. I have been blogging for 4 months and I had no idea that much money could be made from blogging. I started it as a creative release. I have a Google add I really did not pay too much attention to at the bottom of my page. In four months I think I made $18.00.

I think it is time to take this more seriously. I just passed your site on to my daughter in NYC. She has a fashion blog.
Thanks for sharing and I will become a subscriber. Want and need all the help I can get!
Caroline

I’ve been contemplating starting a non-family blog for awhile now, but I am having a hard time figuring out what would be the most beneficial to people. I have a passion for being healthy, I love to cook new things but don’t know much about the kitchen, and I unfortunately know what it means to lose a child. I want to do something so that I can stay at home with my kids, but am not looking for a salary (just something for a little extra dough). It appears that most blogs that commented on here were for frugal living. Would you say that is probably the most popular type of blog out there that makes money? I’d really like to see stats on how health blogs do. I think that’s where I want to be. Hmmm…any suggestions?

Oh and thanks for this post. I just came across it today via another blog (can’t remember which now). This has helped a lot.

I’d say all your topics are pretty popular…which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s definitely an indication there are lots of readers. Whichever you choose, the trick will be to stand out among the crowd. Have you seen my post: How to Find a Unique Angle in a Crowded Niche? I think you might find it helpful. You also might read How to Find Your Passion for other niches to pursue. Thanks so much for stopping by, Elizabeth!

Hi Pam, thanks for stopping by! I have not used radio myself so I can’t answer that question, but I’d definitely recommend googling it! If I had to guess, you might be able to accept advertisers and mention them during your show (“This show is brought to you by…”) and you would obviously use your radio show to drive traffic to your blog of course. You can monetize videos as well. For example, you can do so via YouTube’s Partner program although you must meet certain qualifications.

Thanks for coming over and posting Julia (http://ht.ly/4oiT2 )! I’m totally rereading this post right now — great to hear from you Julia about consistency — I think that’s a key concern. It’d be really interesting to hear more how things break down for different types of bloggers. As a frugal blogger and as organic deals blogger I’ve seen how much TWO niches can vary, and I can only imagine about all the others!

Then I remember I HAD commented last year, attempting to be anonymous, lol – there was bright and shiny picture next to by “Anon Frugal Blogger” haha.

Anyways, all this to say that blogging for an income can change at the drop of a hat – your traffic and/or income can sky rocket or plummet. We’ve been incredibly blessed this year with June 2010 averaging 150,000 now the end of March 2011 we’re averaging 500,000 pageviews and the income has grown at the same rate.

My husband is now home with me and we work on the blog full time together, it’s our ministry, our business, and it’s providing for our family of 6. It is possible, so don’t give up!

How old is your blog? Just moved urls, so it is only 2 weeks old! The old blog is 3 years old

Niche? Christian

Pageviews per month? 670 (only 2 weeks in)

Monthly income? $50

Main income streams? Ads

How long before you made money? Just made my first sale

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 4-5

Turning point or special circumstance? I felt prompted to write my story about my relationship with my Dad one night. So much in fact, I wasn’t going to be sleeping until I wrote that story. The response was tremendous and that kicked off my desire to write encouragement for Christians and Christian Women. It’s been great from there on, though I don’t compare to the numbers some of you all have. YET! 🙂

I’ve seen a few people mention AdSense ads bring in good money. I’ve earned $7 in 5 months… what am I doing wrong? I saw that placement helps, I have it on my main page, and after every post in my RSS feed but that’s it. What should I be doing differently?

Marisha,
Are you using text ads or image ads? I was using text for my first 8 months and only brought in about $50 a month. I changed them to image ads and now make an average $100 per week. I have 3 image ads, one large one on the top of my side bar and 2 more between my first and second post and 9th and 10th post. P.S. Not sure if it was a good move, but I blocked the Groupon image ad….I just couldn’t stand looking at it.

Thanks Amy for writing this post. I read a post of your’s a few months ago on being balanced. This was something I was struggling with, so I cut back my blogging time drastically. I prayed and prayed and realized that this is my blog, and I can do what I want with it. I was so stressed with how many people were wanting certain types of posts, that it was taking away from my family and it wasn’t fun anymore. Since I cut down my blogging time, my income has actually gone up. I don’t blog that much, at least 6 posts per day but no more than 2 hours per day. I am still a newbie and want to learn as much as I can.

How old is your blog? 4 months

Niche? Coupons/Meal Planning/making the most of your money/quick and cheap recipe ideas.

Pageviews per month? The past month I had 7,000

Monthly income? about $100 per month, I also teach coupon seminars around my area and make extra income the months that I do those.

How long before you made money? 3 months, the money just started coming in last month.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Like I said above, 2 hours per day on average.

Turning point or special circumstance? When I read Amy’s blog on balance, I had to re-think my priorities. My family is my first priority, and I started my blog to make a little extra cash to send my son to a private school. It didn’t seem right for me to ignore him in order to pay for his school. I have limited childcare during the day, so I have to fit my blogging into my kids naps and bedtimes. I also want to spend quality time with my husband at night. When my priorities lined up, that is when I started making money. I am hoping that my blog will continue to grow, as my priorities continue to stay in the right place!

I find this topic really interesting. Having thought it would be fun to have a blog I see that it’s tough to fit it in especially with a full time job. I’m not a SAHM although I certainly wish I was. I think I’ll continue to read my favorites. I’ve added a lot of these listed to my favorites and I wish you all best of luck and continued success.

I know I am WAY late, but I wanted to add my little bit, since I, too, have been curious about other blogs and earnings.

How old is your blog? 8 months

Niche? Affordable Family Fun

Pageviews per month? 5, 400 for the last month, but I had a couple REALLY good days. For the last 3 months I have 10,700 pageviews

Monthly income? 0, Nada!

Main income streams? Nothing yet, I’ve been denied for not having high enough numbers, but that was before my last month.

How long before you made money? Someday!

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 2-4 hours, if you d not count the hours I spend playing in preparation for my posts. Some days I will spend 1 hour and others I’ll wake up a few hours early (or stay up late) to post. I don’t do much on Saturdays since they are very slow on my blog and Sundays I take a break.

Turning point or special circumstance? I guest blogged on a couple of blogs and was featured on the same day on a couple of other blogs last month. It made for a few fun days!

I want to thank you all so much for being so open and honest. It’s refreshing to get real answers. I am just starting to advertise on my blog, so I don’t have an income yet and I’m still pretty small. I don’t have a “niche” so I’ll never be one of the big bloggers. I just enjoy sharing my family and it would be nice to have some additional income.

I was wondering if anyone would share their media kit and what’s involved in it. That information has been very hard to find and I don’t have a clue where to start.

I recommend looking at the media kits of other bloggers to know what to include. Sometimes they are available on their advertising page. Otherwise, many will send you theirs if you ask in a friendly email.

I just started my veterinary/pet blog a month or two ago. I have not put much time at all into it as of yet. I feel like I’m still in the set-up phase. No money yet…have not tried, though. I wonder if there are affiliate programs out there that are pet related? Seems like most of them are focused on coupons and shopping.
I’m planning on trying to get a little bit of a following before I try to make money. I don’t see the point in putting in the effort to make money if I’m not getting a lot of page views.

Main income streams? Live Workshops and Personal Consulting, Ebook Sales, Swagbucks, Amazon, Brandcaster

How long before you made money? Immediately due to workshops and ebooks- affiliate sales: it took me about 2 months to figure out what the heck an affiliate was and another month to find some.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Combined time? 2 hours. When you figure in all of the time I waste trying to decide what to post, clicking through windows, getting sidetracked with Facebook, YouTube, and housework: 8 hours.

Turning point or special circumstance? I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of special circumstances. I’ve spoken at a lot of charity events, had several news spots, written syndicated columns, and even have a standing contract with a headline gig at the state fair. Ironically, I didn’t realize these were so powerful until I typed this paragraph.

I’ve been around for a long time and began with a focus on forums and a static website. I just knew forums were the next big thing (which they were), and I decided to focus more on them than blogging. Once the economy tanked, blogs hit the big time, leaving my forums with few hits and threw another learning curve at me.

I’m a DIY kind of gal, and sometimes I think I need to bite the bullet and ask someone to take over. I’m the type of person who has to know everything about everything and spend more time researching stuff than actually doing it. I can tell you how to do just about anything, but don’t ask me to do it for you! The time I’ve spent learning everything from web design to graphic design to web marketing to public speaking has outweighed any profit that I could ever make. However, I absolutely LOVE what I do and use my blog as an outlet for my work.

Love the new blog Amy- I am so glad to see your newfound success. You deserve it.

I’m in the research phase. A friend and I have always been interested in blogging, but have never done it ourselves. We just sat down to brainstorm a couple of weeks ago. This post is unbelievably helpful! I am learning so much from your blog Amy, if we ever get up and running, you’re getting a huge shout out!!!

Turning point or special circumstance? I don’t blog to make money and since it’s not my focus, I don’t put much time and energy in that direction. This makes network ads a terrific fit for my site. I also homeschool our 10 children and try to stay off the computer while they are awake which seriously limits computer time.

So interesting to read this! One thing I’ve learned is that more page views doesn’t always equal more revenue, even with ads and affiliates. I’m still trying to figure out what would monetize best for my website, since while blogging is a fun hobby, I don’t want to be a work-at-home-mom without being adequately paid for my time away from my family.

How old is your blog? 4 years this month!

Niche? Food & recipes… mostly!

Pageviews per month? About 250,000

Monthly income? After taxes, hosting, domain, internet, tech support when necessary, etc? Well, I think I paid taxes on about $300 from my website last year… unfortunately we had a technical issue that cost $1100 to resolve (and it really did need to be resolved). SO thankful my husband can do most tech stuff for us though!! 🙂

Main income streams? Adsense, affiliates, BlogAds

How long before you made money? I think I waited about 2 years to put ads on my website. I loved having it ad-free!!!! I didn’t want ads cluttering my site if they were only earning a dollar or two a day.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? When I first started — probably 4-6 hours. Then I cut back a lot (down to about 8 hours a week or even less) for a couple years. In the last couple months, I’ve started spending more time on it again — probably 2-4 hours a day (no weekends). I’m still deciding whether I really want to be a WAHM or if I should go back to 1-2 posts per week and just enjoy life more!

Turning point or special circumstance? Nothing super exciting I guess… it’s been a gradual process. 🙂

I need to send my clients to check out this post; some spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about stats and page views but I’ve know what many of you do…this is not a money making process if you don’t make it your ‘business.’

I have a unique story. I’ve owned a web business for 15 years (yes, really). I was fortunate enough to have worked for a period of time for a cable company that had this fantastical idea…use cable for delivering this new thing called…the Internet! I decided to start my own business developing websites and have been doing it ever since.

Did I start to blog about that though? Nope…after 15 years and a terrible business partner relationship, I was burned out and started a 2nd small business for fun selling wine accessories, home decor and gifts. After I started using Twitter 2 years ago I decided to turn my recipe website at http://www.creative-culinary.com into a food blog so I started transferring and cooking and photographing and sending people there…all in the hopes of getting new eyeballs at the wine accessory store.

Then one day I answered a question someone on Twitter had about their website. A Twitter follower asked how I knew that and I told her I was a web developer. She had been looking for someone to develop her blog and I became that someone. Actually was the impetus for my tagline ‘Web by Day, Wine by Night’ and with some finished sites and lots of RT’s…I have become known as a food blogger/web developer.

So your questions are more difficult to answer because in truth…my food blog has become a major source of revenue for my web biz and revenue is not just because of advertising. So, my page views are not huge but it’s still a hobby that now serves as an example of the professional work I do.

How old is your blog? 1 year 2 months (but have generated traffic from original recipe site which is 15 years old)

Niche? Food and wine

Pageviews per month? I’m down to 5,000; but think it’s fair to say that since breaking my leg in February…everything is a bit down!

Monthly income? $500-$700 in ads and affiliate sales; project work in the high four figures.

Main income streams? Google Adsense, FoodBuzz, Affiliate sales for hosting and Thesis theme (I specialize in this product; won’t develop a blog without it!)

How long before you made money? 2 months

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? Blogging and Twitter average 2 hours a day; I have to cook and photograph what I blog so that’s more timely than actual blog itself and I spend minimum an hour a day tweeting. Related activities if including work product? 8 addditional hours a day!

Turning point or special circumstance? Developing my own blog and then letting tweeps know I was a web developer; I have more work than I can almost keep up with!

Like I said…somewhat unique in that my original intent to blog led to my growing my main biz. Who knew?

just want to say thanks sooo much for this post. Makes me realize I NEED to find out MORE – and do more! I’m only making a few hundred a month if I’m lucky, and I certainly have the commitment and put in the time to make more! I need to use more affiliates and get into an ad network.

Thanks to everyone who has shared!! I would love to hear more on this!

I am so appreciative for this post. Everyone yacks about it, but no one ever gives straight answers and numbers. I’m new to blogging for income, but I’ll put it all out there.

How old is your blog? 4 months

Niche? Working from home/starting an online business

Pageviews per month? May – 946

Monthly income? May $100 (this only includes passive income, not money made from VA work, freelance writing, consulting, etc.)

Main income streams? Passive income is from affiliate sales

How long before you made money? 2 months

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1-2 per day

Turning point or special circumstance? I haven’t made a turn in the road, yet. I’m still gaining speed.

As stated above, these numbers only reflect passive income earned from my blog. I do make a full-time income online, but my blog was started strictly as a second, “hands off” income stream. Blogging has been a catapult for several paid opportunities outside of my usual VA niche, which wasn’t really something I expected but am grateful for. I have slowed down a bit over the last month due to summer starting, but plan to pick things back up in July and August.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? I work a full time job outside of the home, so I rarely have time to blog more than 3 hours a day. If I do, I have no life outside of blogging. I really have to be careful with time management, so as not to neglect my husband and other important things in life.

Turning point or special circumstance? Waiting on that one! I’d like to be able to quit more job and focus primarily on my blog. Working towards that! 🙂 Also, I landed a couple news stories that boosted my readership quickly and significantly.

Thanks so much for this, Amy! Very cool to see a topic that definitely needs to be out in the open more!

Well, here’s one from the “newbie”… not like any of you “champs” can learn something from a newbie, but maybe I can help a fellow “newbie”er 🙂

How old is your blog? 3 months

Niche? Providing good ideas, beneficial information, and profitable resources to the reader (disclaimer: I started following other money saving blogs and posting as they were, thus, focusing on, what I consider “heartless” content (taking the “personal” out of the post). I’ve come to realize this, and have refocused, back to more “heartful” content and on website layout (ease of navigation).

Pageviews per month? 2,500

Monthly income? $45

Main income streams? Google Adsense

How long before you made money? about a week after monetizing (about a month after starting blog)

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 8 on the prime days (Tuesday-Thursday) about 2-3 on the weekends, trying to completely cut out working on the Sabbath

Turning point or special circumstance? When I adopted your (yes, your’s Amy) disclosure (“Disclosure: Some links in this post are affiliate links, meaning, if you click on one of them and make a purchase, I will receive a portion of that sale…at absolutely no cost to you of course. I like to think of it as a win-win situation. I’d be grateful for a click through one of my affiliate links, but that is completely up to you. :)”).

I reworded it a couple of times, and now mine just reads:
A Simple Click Helps Support eeendeavors.com
I’d be grateful for a click on one of the ads to the right

I don’t know how legit (or non-legit) it is to do that, but I’m all about transparency and felt that my readers wouldn’t know that they could help me out in this way if I didn’t just tell them. I’ve also written a couple of “explanation” posts about the addition of the ads and why I did it.

What is your niche, or, what topics do you write about? Frugal Living.

How many pageviews do you get a month? About 2,000.

What is your monthly income? Hard to answer per monthly income because I’ve made so little. So far I’ve made $22.06.

What is/are your main income stream/s? Just affiliates so far like Escalate and Logical Media.

How long did it take before you started making money? In my humble opinion I really haven’t made money yet. When I get my first check then I feel like I have made some money.

Hours per day do you spend on your blog and blog-related activites (networking, etc.)? I used to spend 8+ hours on it but have recently cut down and found my niche. Now I spend anywhere from 2-4 hrs a day. I was getting burn out and didn’t want to work on my blog. It seemed all I did was sit behind my desk and worked on my blog. It was becoming a drugery. I put aside so many things like friends, spending time with my pets, photography etc. I seriously thought about not doing this but found I missed my blog if I didn’t work on it. Now I have to find a happy medium and just be happy to do my blog. I’m still wondering if I should do it. My problem is I don’t spend enough time networking, finding new readers, finding out the best ways to advertise. I jumped in head first when I began and didn’t know what it took to do a blog. It takes a lot of work!! So if you are thinking of starting a blog, do your homework. Do a lot of research. Ask a lot of questions, go to blog summits if you can. Find out what works best for you, what you are passionate about, have fun with it.

What was your turning point? I’m so new to this I don’t feel like I’ve had a turning point. I am learning a lot still. I’ve done my own design and layout, found out what my niche is, finding out the best way to advertise etc. There is still so much to learn. We will see.

Wow! This is incredibly, incredibly helpful! As a blogger of many years that just blogs “for fun”, I’m finally seriously considering starting to approach blogging with a business mindset. This is very helpful in that I finally get a big picture idea of the time involved and the idea of income ranges. I had NO idea what amount of money bloggers are making. This gives me a much better idea!

Blogging 20 hours a week is intimidating as I can hardly keep up with things now. I also wouldn’t want to calculate my price per hour with that kind of blogging mileage:)

Main income streams? Google, Logical Media, Brandcaster ( I live in NC and can’t participate in the Amazon program)

How long before you made money? Month 2 I made $56 dollars because I was participating in the 5 Minutes for Moms Ultimate Blog Party

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 2-4 -I’m trying to find the balance-plus my oldest child heads off to school in less than 4 weeks. I want to have as much summer fun as possible.

Turning point or special circumstance? 5 Minutes for Moms Ultimate Blog Party was a huge turning point for me. In month 2, my blog started earning money. I know that the Savvy Blogging Summit will help me as well. I am learning how to monetize and there is definitely a learning curve. I’m looking to find local sponsors and generate income through them.

Monthly income? It varies greatly! I earned $0/month for a long time, though. lol Now I probably average around $900, counting all my income streams.

Main income streams? BlogHer ads, private ads

How long before you made money? a good 9 months

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 1-2 hours/day

Turning point or special circumstance? I can’t think of anything in particular…my blog has slowly grown over the past 2 years. I did have a TV spot in February, but aside from the initial spike in hits and the increase in email subscribers, not a lot has changed from that.

Monthly income? This can really vary which is why I think it is important to have several streams of income – – This month so far I’ve made around $1250

Main income streams? Google Adsense, Brandcaster, Escalate Media, Logical Media, My Savings and private ads. I live in NC so I can’t be an Amazon affiliate, and I am hoping to find a great replacement of some sort, so if anyone has any great ideas let me know. (-:

How long before you made money? I think it was 3 months

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? about 4 hours Monday through Friday, 2 hours on Saturday. I try to take Sunday off, but I have been spending my recent Sundays writing guest posts, and future posts for after my baby is born. I have actually cut back on the hours that I am spending. I was getting burned out, and have been really tired this pregnancy, so I have been giving up some things that I was doing with the blog. However, it has not seemed to hurt my numbers very much.

Turning point or special circumstance? My biggest turning point was when I decided that my time was worth more. I was making the equivalent of $1 an hour. So, I set up a spread sheet and tracked my ads each day. This was really boring for me to do since I really just enjoyed posting, but blogging was taking up too much of my day with too little results, so I decided that I had to concentrate on the income side as well. If the ads did not produce any income after 2 days, I removed them. I also experimented with different sizes and ad types. I think my biggest problem was that I was so excited that I had all of these affiliate offers to choose from, that I just put them wherever on my page, and I wasn’t really looking at the results.

Once I eliminated my ads that weren’t making money, I started moving up my highest paying ads to the top of my blog. By highest paying, I mean making me the most money. Previously, I had just put the ads with the highest payout at the top, but they weren’t converting like my other ads. (This should have been common sense, but it took me a while to figure it out.)

Also, it made a difference once companies started finding my blog and contacting me. I don’t know how that happened, but that did make a difference financially.

Another turning point was just making blogging friends that have been so helpful in answering my questions and helping me out.

Turning point or special circumstance? I am so not techy, but love blogging. Had to self teach myself quite a bit & took online workshop on blogging to help. While the workshop gave me a bit more info on improving SEO, I still have a lot to learn!
One of the best things that helped improve traffic to my blog was social media sites like Twitter & Facebook along with networking with other bloggers.

Monthly income? $300 – $500 (from blogging) I also do some freelance writing.

Main income streams? Affiliates, Google. I also choose to earn Amazon credit from Amazon sales. Between that and the Amazon credit I’ve earned as a referrer through Swagbucks, I have a few hundred dollars in my Amazon account! 😉

How long before you made money? Because I wanted to make sure my blog was content first, I did NO monetizing until month 4. My first month I earned $40, but I didn’t receive a check until month 8. Remember, many affiliates require you reach a certain “threshhold” before payout.

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 2-4

Turning point or special circumstance? Pay attention to what your readers respond to and what they don’t. I learned early on that my readers did NOT respond to the many Logical Media campaigns I ran, for instance. This may have been a combination of lack of interest/low traffic. However, I am now VERY choosy about what offers I post. I’d rather be selective and get a GREAT response on one offer than risk harming my credibility and earning nothing by posting lots of stuff. BE CHOOSY. Your brand is at stake. I have personally stopped following a few blogs that come across as only in it for the money. A great way to gage this – make sure the offers you post YOU would actually be willing to do yourself.

Thanks again, Amy! I’m delighted to follow your blog! I recommend it constantly. It is a wealth of information and I LOVE the topics you dive into. THANK YOU.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask your readers what they think of offers! I can think of one specific offer I no longer post because of negative reader feedback. For me to continue to post it could indicate I don’t listen to what my readers want. I’m more concerned about the long term health of my blog than short term profit.

Turning point or special circumstance? I was invited to join a group of bloggers who promote one another by guest blogging, tweeting, and generally supporting and promoting one another. We attended Blissdom together and that networking was huge in pushing my blog upward.

As far as networking goes, I think a great idea is to seek out other bloggers who seem to be trackin’ with you. Approach them to see if they might want to create a chat group or email group. There doesn’t have to be a lot of formality, just hang out. Pretty soon, you’ll be talking about more than just blogging and if you make a point of building each other up and encouraging one another, I think you’ll all see growth. There’s strength in numbers. 🙂

Try initiating — I bet you’ll find there are a lot of bloggers who’d really appreciate getting involved in a group like that.

I had wanted to have a group to network with for quite a while, and finally after Blissdom, I just bit the bullet and contacted some people (and held my breath). I was shocked when all but two of the people were very excited and wanted to network. So, we have a Ning group. It’s very nice, and I’m so glad that I just took the leap of faith.

I was just wallowing in self-pity (LOL) that I have to seek other people out. But, then again, I probably have had people contact me about many things, and I’m just being a whiner. That happens sometimes. 😉 It’s always easy to overlook the good things and only focus on the negatives, isn’t it?

Thanks, Connie. I appreciate it! I think that I have just been really out of sorts lately. It’s been a really long school year (all for completely not school related things). After the second death of a grandparent in this school year (last month, first was in November), I think I just got wiped out. So, I think I’ve been extra critical of myself.

I visited your site today via Jimmies Collage. I loved the entire look of your page. It made me smile to see that you are a Catholic. There aren’t to many out there. Your site looks great. Maybe you could add more “how to’s”. I did forward your blog to a few friends because your craft room makeover.

You mentioned “I was invited to join a group of bloggers who promote one another” networking with other bloggers……..I have noticed this with some and have wanted to do something like this, I’ve even approached a few who are interested in doing it……..but we’re not sure exactly what to do ! lol….how do you all stay connected? group emails? do you brainstorm together or just send out what you are doing so everyone can promote it?

This is a topic Amy, I’d LOVE to hear more about if you could do a post that lays it out a little more.

My short answer is, the groups I’m a part of chat on Skype. We hop on when we get a chance and try to help one another out with questions (“Hey, I was thinking about doing this. Has anyone done it? Thoughts?”), promote each other when we can and just hang out, sharing life together. It doesn’t have to be formal at all. Just grab a few people, jump on Skype and go!

Just jump in with some friends and start brainstorming. That’s how I got to know Connie and Amy, and it’s been such an encouragement to have people who “get” you and this crazy blogging adventure. There’s no right or wrong way…it’s all about helping each other out.

I contacted them at this email: support@savvysource.zendesk.com and sent a screen shot of my stats from Google Analytics for the period I had the ad up. They were very nice and got right back to me and sent a check right away. They also offered to raise the original cap for payment if I would keep the ad up.

How old is your blog? My blog is 4 months old but I blogged for two years as a hobby on blogger.com and switched to WP in February.

Niche? Christian Living. My blog focuses on every area of life that the Proverbs 31:10-31 women experienced in her day. I post about managing the families finances, meals, homekeeping and homeschooling. I have recently been sharing insight on balancing a business with being a homemaker which is why this topic of this post is especially interesting to me.

Pageviews per month? Between 10-13k per month since February 2010

Monthly income? May = $550.08 (Does not include income derived from my Coupon 101 E-book and Coupon 101 Virtual Workshop)

Main income streams? Affiliates

How long before you made money? 30 days. I started off with sponsored posts and received a check after 30 days.

Turning point or special circumstance? When I moved over from blogger in February 2010 to a self hosted site. WP offered more flexibility for me to work less on the tech side of the site and more on building my online social community.

How long before you made money? probably a couple of months; about 1 year before significant $

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day? 4-5 hours

Turning point or special circumstance? Probably when I started looking at the blog as a business instead of a just a hobby. I figured out how much money I wasn’t making by ignoring some revenue streams. That got me motivated!

Thanks for being transparent Erin! I’m so curious…you mentioned you spend less time blogging now than you did before. Would you say that’s because you’ve just streamlined your process & gotten into a rhythm or is it because you’re concentrating on other income-producing opportunities?

The most helpful thing for me has been to watch and listen to others closely, especially those in my niche. The next thing is to actively build traffic (I’ve shared some of my tips here) and network. Finally, someone else mentioned it at some point, but experimentation is key. Tweak things on your site, move things around, change ad sizes, shapes, placement, try new income streams, etc. etc. until you find a configuration that works.

Other things that make a difference is user-friendliness, site efficiency, ease of navigation, uncluttered design, etc. If you’re interested in making changes here, these are the things I tackle in consulting. I visit your site and try to find ways you could improve your stickiness, user-friendliness and optimization and then provide you with a list of suggestions for improvement. (Email me if your interested.)

By the way, thanks so much for sharing your story and giving us a peek into what life is like when you’re trying to make a living from blogging. I appreciate you giving us your honest take!

I have set “work hours” and times of the week for blogging, emailing, etc. My blog is not necessarily a time sensitive blog (like other frugal niche blogs), so I can be more planned and intentional with what I post and how often I post. I work now on more of an editorial content schedule, as opposed to a post this deal each day type of schedule. I can plan and write posts as long as 2-3 weeks ahead of time.

Thanks to many of your tips and the help of an assistant, I am able to keep my inbox clean each day and am not distracted or overwhelmed by my inbox. “One Touch Rule” is essential!

And the Post Templates plugin is worth every penny!

I do spend additional time each week on my cookbook endeavors, but usually on the weekends to keep child care costs down. It varies depending on deadlines, etc.

Interesting post. Glad you shared your answers. Too many people who get this question answer it without really answering it (ala politicians) and instead give the cop out answer of it depends (duh!, but it depends isn’t a helpful answer). You gave some great metrics too which should help people to identify where they can improve their efforts.

Anyways, here are my answers.

– How old is your blog?
I just reset it, so it is in the midst of a redesign and relaunch. I am not new to blogging (been blogging since 2003), but I am shifting back to using my own personal domain from my other syndication channels currently used.

-Niche?
With the relaunch and I have yet to determine the focus I want to pursue on my own domain, but in the past I have touched upon: Personal. Technology. Food. Investing. Entrepreneurship. etc. Basically whatever the heck interests me and my experience as a multi-business owner and investment manager.

-Pageviews per month?
This is part of why I am shifting back to using my own domain so that I can track and utilize that data. As it is right now, that data is unavailable to me from the distribution channels I was using. Right now it is low because I haven’t yet advertised the change.

-Monthly income?
Nil from blog. Haven’t purposed it for that as of yet.

-Main income streams?
I own and operate an investment holding company which has stakes in (and manages) a variety of other properties.

-How long before you made money?
I have done it because I enjoyed it. Current distribution channels are taking advantage of my efforts and contributions so I am re-purposing my domain to handle my blog and will look at monetizing that as it develops.

-Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
Four

-Turning point or special circumstance?
Turning point was getting tired of being taken advantage of by my current distribution channels and allowing my content to be in the hands of some other company. Now I am taking back the control of my content and maintaining it on my own domain.

Amy, I am so glad you posted this topic. It’s one of those things we don’t like to discuss, but are SO curious about. Also – with the rise of many many many bloggers, it would be helpful for them to see right off the bat, that the income isn’t there right away and even when it is, it’s really much more than a part time job. So thank you.

Turning point or special circumstance? When I learned how to place my Google ad better it made a huge difference. I had made $30 in almost a year – when I changed my ads – I made $60 in that first month! I can not seem to find an ad network. I tried FoodBuz, but they denied me because you need to be 90% food – I have food post 1-2x a week, but not 90%. I applied to Lifetime Moms several weeks ago, but have not heard anything. I’ve stayed away from BlogHer because I’ve heard of their limitations. I make the majority of my money with ad spots on my blog.

I have no affiliation with them, but I believe you are over the threshold to qualify for it – have you considered buysellads.com to sell ads on your site? I’ve seen a few sites using that and they seem to have fair rates ($60-120+ for a 100×100 spot and some of the more trafficked sites are $500+ for similar size or 200×100).

You make a good point about the Google ad needing tweaking for it to make an impact. I’ve learned this lesson too. It’s weird how just a simple change in copy will dramatically spike the clicks. I’ve found you have to be constantly tweaking that ad to get it to be constructive (and not a wasted expense).

I’m one of the Lifetime Moms, if you want to contact me on my blog, I can get in touch with our ad network team and see where they are with bringing in new affiliates. 🙂 Otherwise, I think you’re doing great with your blog only being a year old!

I know you would completely qualify for LT, but they just told their affiliate on our last conference call they weren’t bringing in any new ones right now. (Just in case you were wondering why you hadn’t heard…don’t be discouraged.) 🙂

Turning point or special circumstance? My numbers really fluctuate. My husband is a very well know designer and is the Creative Director at Twitter. If he Tweets anything about my site (which he only has done twice. The launch and the re-design) my numbers skyrocket for about a week. I also had a freelance gig that paid $200.

I make $0 from my blog. This is my choice. I could sell sidebar ad space, I could incorpate google ads/other ads/etc. — I could charge to host giveaways, etc. I chose for my blog to simply be something I enjoy doing – not a way to make money. And, I do not want my blog cluttered with ads.

Great response! and there is nothing wrong with that either! Well done. 🙂

You make a great point too about how keeping it enjoyable keeps you interested in continuing with it whereas perhaps if you started putting ads on it then it would become yet another job and it would suck all the fun & enjoyment out of doing it.

Turning point or special circumstance? When I started to look at my blog like a small business realizing that I should invest all of my income from the first year back into the business for successful growth. I’m switching over to WP, paying a designer, going to a conference, etc. If after the second year I’m not making $1000 a month than I’ll probably reevaluate. My background is in marketing – so I look at social media and its ability to market items like an education. If I want to go back into the work force after my kiddos are older, I feel like I’ve kept my skills sharp and have something to put on my resume.

:When I started to look at my blog like a small business realizing that I should invest all of my income from the first year back into the business for successful growth.”
That’s a great way to look at it. It affirms some of the decisions I made early on (switching to WordPress, investing in a user friendly theme). I’ve just decided to get designer to do a redesign. Now I just have to wait for a spot to open up:)

Turning point or special circumstance? Problogger’s Build a Better Blog series last April and moving from blogger to self-hosted during that time. The other turning point was being contacted by a company to do a freelancing job for them. That was a bit of luck combined with the work I’d done to build my blog.

First thank you sooo much for this post! I have been dying to know this because I feel like we are always spinning our wheels and getting nowhere!

How old is your blog?
Blog- 5 years
Website- 11 years

Niche?
Frugal Cooking
Frugal Living

Pageviews per month?
We had 100,000 + a month on website and blog but had to go on bedrest with my last pregnancy and now it is down to 60,000 as I haven’t been working on it much for almost 18 months.

Monthly income?
In 2008 we made $54,000 that year but…… (you knew that was coming:-) we had 3 people, my mom, husband and I all working more than 40 hours a week. In the end we averaged $3 an hour! Basically mom and I work for free and my husband is the one with the income.

In 2009 we made $60,000 and I basically quit working on it. So my husband’s hourly income went up. Mom still worked but about 20 hours a week.

Main income streams?
Sell our print books and e-books through our newsletter

Affiliate sales – e-books
Google Ads
Swagbucks

How long before you made money?
9 years!

Hours blogging (& related activities) per day?
Husband works 40 plus hours a week
I work 1-2 hours a day
mom works 2-4 hours a day

Turning point or special circumstance?
(Get your coffee or tea and have a seat!)

Mom and I both have a chronic illness and I now have 4 kids. We just don’t have the energy to spend hours and hours working. Basically mom and I do this as a hobby and just for fun (the fun is pretty gone as you will see below) and as a way to pass the time. I had originally thought this might be a fun way to make some extra money doing what I love…talking about saving money.

My husband is my tech guy and does most of the work to keep it going. He quit his job in 2006 to work full time for Living On A Dime but… (there it is again 🙂 he doesn’t like being stuck in front of the computer all day by himself in our bedroom..uh… office. He has decided to go ahead and try to get back into video production.

Now, I will say that I am totally burned out. We have spent YEARS trying to make a good income doing this and it’s just not coming. $3 an hour is NOT worth it!

We keep trying new things and it just doesn’t seem to work. A good example is we decided to switch the website over to a new WordPress template. It was supposed to be an “easy” and fairly quick move. It has turned into a 6 month nightmare and it’s still not loaded with all the info. from the old site.

We will spend HOURS ( 40 + or more) on a sale only to have it bomb an bring in $20.

Also, we spend HOURS dealing with customers. The majority of our time is spent with people who have lost e-books and order problems. I hate dealing with this stuff. I just wanted to pass my great ideas on how to save money on to people but I quickly realized that if I want to make money I am going to have to sell something and that means customers. (yes, we keep trying to find people to hire to help us out but they never seem to work, even with high recommendations)

We also spend hours dealing with ads and angry customers. We have Google ads on our site and not so great stuff will pop up. So we have to go through and find where it is (the person who saw the ad never remembers what page it was on) and then deal with the person complaining. Google’s filters aren’t that great so stuff gets through all the time that we don’t want on our site.
There are lots of other examples but you get the point.

The good part is that when the kids have a concert or we need to take off he can take off work but we do then have to make up the time missed working by working very late. We do get to take vacations but they aren’t paid and we have to again make up the time so we spend 2-3 weeks before our vacation working late to get things done while we are gone.

I know this is probably way more than you wanted to know but I want to be real. I have people ALL THE TIME ask how to start an internet business and make money at home. The truth is it is still work and a lot of it.

At this point we are trying to get the website stable and up and running again in the new template. As soon as hubby finds another job he is going to quit Living On A Dime full time and we will most likely go back to making not much money since mom and I just aren’t up to working a lot.

More days than not I just want to dump it all the stress is really starting to be too much but if our income didn’t depend on it I would enjoy just posting tips, hints and recipes as I feel like it so I’m not going to totally give up.

It’s funny because I was going to email you Amy and see what your consulting services include because we sure could use some help!

Anyway, sorry for the novel but that is what’s involved in making a full time income for us.

First, big hugs and a “Thank You!” to you for sharing all that information! While the income is impressive, the amount of manpower behind it brings me back to earth pretty quickly. Second, have you attempted to sell your entire website? I’m thinking that with that desirable domain name, documented income stream, steady pageviews and all the pure information you’d earn quite a bit of money from the sale!

Just wanted to let you know that your blog is one of my favorites for reading about frugal living and cooking. I have visited many times, though not recently. I hope it all works out. You have a lot of great content.

I think you have put too much effort to sell this site its much more worth if you keep it and run it in the right way. If I were you I would outsource the huge effort you are putting and train a person to do your job. I think you can get someone to do the job for as less as $2/hour which would mean that you would still earn money. And then your husband could get another job and possibly you and your mother would manage the website alone.And thus you could have time to search to increase your revenues.